Physical-Layer Fingerprint-Space Capacity Analysis for 100BASE-TX Devices in IIoT
How many industrial devices can be uniquely identified by their electrical signatures
Factory networks can identify Ethernet devices by analyzing tiny electrical quirks in their transmitted signals—a kind of hardware fingerprint. This paper calculates that standard industrial Ethernet devices (100BASE-TX) can create roughly 30 billion distinguishable electrical signatures, and experiments on real network cards confirm the method works reliably in practice.
Industrial facilities need to stop unauthorized devices from impersonating legitimate equipment on their networks. Physical-layer fingerprinting offers a defense that doesn't rely on passwords or certificates—it's built into the hardware itself. This capacity analysis tells engineers whether fingerprinting can actually scale across large factories with thousands of devices, and the results show it can reliably distinguish between different network cards under real-world conditions.