NetworkInterfacesView is a free portable utility to display a list of all network adapters and interfaces installed on your system. This tool is the latest in a long line of system utilities from the excellent Nirsoft stable.
Whilst it is possible to view most of the same information via a Command Prompt (using the ipconfig /all command), the utility has a much clearer interface and several extra features – it’s easy to copy, print or save the information too.
NetworkInterfacesView is compatible with Windows 2000 up to and including Windows 8; it supports 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows. The utility displays the following information (where present): Device Name and Connection Name, IP Address and Default Gateway, DHCP Server and Status, MAC Address and MTU setting plus more.
Download – as a zip file from the official website here – once extracted, just run the program file NetworkInterfacesView.exe to begin. The main window displays all the information found in the registry about your network devices as shown in the example below:
As usual with Nirsoft utilities, you can use the right click context menu or the menu bar to copy selected rows (to paste them into another application) or to save (export) them to a xml/csv/tab-delimited/html file. There are also options to create an HTML report and you can drag/drop columns to change their order if required.
The Options menu lets you choose whether or not to display disconnected or non-operational hardware (e.g. a USB wifi adapter that is not connected) which might be helpful if there are multiple adapters listed as shown above.
Conclusion
NetworkInterfacesView is probably of most use to network techs or advanced users who frequently need to review settings of installed network adapters. However, its simplicity may also help users copy and paste their adapter settings to get better tech support from ISPs or forums etc.
It’s a tiny program (under 100KB) and the information displayed is much easier to read than when using ipconfig – it doesn’t include pseudo network interfaces (e.g. Teredo tunnels found in Vista onwards) which can often make it harder to identify the physical adapters actually in use.
I think AdapterWatch is also very good. I haven’t tested NetworkInterfacesView but I suppose it’s kinda the same, even if I think AdapterWatch shows more information. Take a look at it too :)
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/awatch.html
@Flaxe – thanks for the link :-) It’s an old utility but seems to still work ok on W7 (so probably ok on W8 too).
I wonder whether Nir forgot about it as it does have more info plus an option to release/renew IP? Unless he thought all that detail made it just too complex for the average user so wrote the new utility as a simpler alternative…
@Roy: Haha yeah, it’s strange that he made two utilities that are almost identical :P Maybe it’s as you said… wrote a new one as a simpler alternative.
Keep the good work up with writing all these articles about different software etc, it’s really nice! :)