Can you find the network adapter on your machine that’s connected to the Internet? On a Windows 8/2012 machine its fairly simple:
PS> Get-NetConnectionProfile -IPv4Connectivity Internet
Name : NetworkName
InterfaceAlias : AdapterName
InterfaceIndex : 12
NetworkCategory : Private
IPv4Connectivity : Internet
IPv6Connectivity : LocalNetwork
What else can you discover?
The important information is the InterfaceIndex
Get-NetAdapter -InterfaceIndex 12
shows the NIC information such as name, MAC address and speed (similar to Win32_NetworkAdapter)
Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -Name name
shows buffer data
Get-NetAdapterStatistics -Name name
shows transmitted data
Get-NetIPConfiguration -InterfaceIndex 12
pulls the IP configuration
This just scratches the surface to the networking modules in Windows 8/2012
The modules are based on new WMI classes for the most part so you won’t find them on legacy operating systems even with WMF 3 loaded.