PowerShell Get-NetAdapter

List Your Network Adapters with PowerShell 3.0Get-NetAdapter

PowerShell 3.0 introduces a new family of NetAdapter of cmdlets.  Get-NetAdapter is the default, and its job is to enumerate your computer’s network cards (NICs).

Tutorial for Get-NetAdapter

 ♣

The Magic of PowerShell’s NetAdapter

To appreciate the elegance of Get-NetAdapter, you have to experienced the uglyness of enumerating network cards using NetSh or VBScript; even with PowerShell 2.0’s Get-WmiObject Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration it wasn’t easy to list NICs.

One aspect of elegance that I admire, especially in scripting, is simplicity.  Therefore to get started all you need is the command: Get-NetAdapter.

Simple Example of Get-NetAdapter

# PowerShell 3.0 lists all your computer’s network cards.
Get-NetAdapter

Note 1:  You can find more properties by piping the output into | Get-Member.

Research NetAdapter Properties

Important: Adjust the value of my $Nic variable depending on the results of the simple: Get-NetAdapter command.

Clear-Host
$Nic = "Wi-Fi"
Get-NetAdapter -name $Nic | Format-List Name,`
InterfaceDescription, DeviceName, DeviceWakeupEnable,`
LinkSpeed, NetworkAddress, PromiscuousMode, Status

Note 2:  Take care with the ` backtick; in particular avoid spaces after this command that tells PowerShell to word-wrap to the next line.

Note 3:  Here is an even better plan, research your own properties with:
Get-NetAdapter | Get-Member

Guy Recommends:  A Free Trial of the Network Performance Monitor (NPM)Review of Orion NPM v11.5 v11.5

SolarWinds’ Network Performance Monitor will help you discover what’s happening on your network.  This utility will also guide you through troubleshooting; the dashboard will indicate whether the root cause is a broken link, faulty equipment or resource overload.

What I like best is the way NPM suggests solutions to network problems.  Its also has the ability to monitor the health of individual VMware virtual machines.  If you are interested in troubleshooting, and creating network maps, then I recommend that you try NPM now.

Download a free trial of Solarwinds’ Network Performance Monitor

Understanding Get-NetAdapter’s Parameters

Employing the -name parameter is a precise method for specifying the network card, and it saves me having to use Powershell’s Where-Object statement to filter the network cards.

Let us call for Get-Help and see which other parameters are available for the Get-NetAdapter cmdlet.

#PowerShell NetAdapter parameter research
Clear-Host
Get-Help Get-NetAdapter

Results: I found two interesting parameters -IncludeHidden and -physical.

Research Microsoft’s NetAdapter Cmdlet Family

Once you have discovered a useful PowerShell cmdlet such as Get-NetAdapter it’s worth investigating alternative verbs; this is how I discovered Enable, Disable and Restart-NetAdapter.

Get-Command -Noun netadapter

CommandType  Name            ModuleName
———–         ——            ————
Function Disable-NetAdapter  NetAdapter
Function Enable-NetAdapter   NetAdapter
Function Get-NetAdapter        NetAdapter
Function Rename-NetAdapter NetAdapter
Function Restart-NetAdapter   NetAdapter
Function Set-NetAdapter        NetAdapter

How to Enable or Disabled Your NIC

Here is an example to disable the Wi-Fi’s network adapter.

# PowerShell script to disable your network card.
$Nic = ‘Wi-Fi’
Disable-NetAdapter -Name $Nic

Note 4:  To reverse the action substitute Enable-NetAdapter for Disable-Network adapter.

Note 5:  See more on PowerShell’s Disable-NetAdapter.

NetAdapter Challenge

PowerShell’s default verb is ‘Get’.  Thus, my challenge is to substitute plain NetAdapter for Get-NetAdapter in the above examples.  Actually, I regard this shortcut as sloppy scripting, but it does explain why other PowerShell commands work the way they do, for example:
Help Disable-NetAdapter
… is really ‘Get-Help’ Disable-NetAdapter, but as ‘Get’ is the default verb, the shorter form works.

Guy Recommends: SolarWinds Free Network Bandwidth MonitorFree Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor

This freeware monitor is great for checking whether your network’s load-balancing is performing as expected, for example, are two interfaces are getting about equal traffic?

It’s easy to install and straightforward to configure. You will soon be running tests to see how much network bandwidth your applications consume.

The GUI has a lovely balance between immediate network traffic data in the middle, combined with buttons to seek related data and configuration settings. Give this monitor a try, it’s free! 

Download your free network bandwidth monitor

If you need more comprehensive network analysis software:
Download a free trial of NPM (Network Performance Monitor)

Getting Started With PowerShell v 3.0Disable-NetAdapter Network Configuration

  • Launch PowerShell (Preferably the ISE version)
  • Copy the lines of code in the above examples (into memory).
  • Right-click in the top pane.
  • Paste.

More PowerShell v 3.0 Networking Cmdlets

One way to discover more about the new version 3 cmdlets is to look at the ‘Modules’ section of PowerShell ISE’s Commands pane.

See more examples of PowerShell v 3.0 NetAdapter cmdlets »

Summary of PowerShell Get-NetAdapter

PowerShell 3.0 introduces a new family of NetAdapter cmdlets which manipulate a computer’s NICs.  This page shows you how to research the properties of your network card(s).

If you like this page then please share it with your friends

 


See more Microsoft PowerShell v 3.0 examples

PowerShell 3.0  • What’s New in PowerShell 3.0  • PowerShell v 3.0 ISE  • PowerShell Home

Get-NetAdapter  • Disable-NetAdapter  • Enable-NetAdapter  • Get-NetIPConfiguration

PowerShell Network Cmdlets  • PowerShell 3.0 Logon Script  • PowerShell Show-Command