Physical Node ID

The physical node ID is also known as the Media Access Control (MAC) address. This value is unique to every network card, although some models do let you assign your own address. However, this is rare and generally found only on embedded systems.

If the value represented is FFFFFF FFFFFF or 000000 000000, there's likely something wrong with the setup of the hardware, or you need to assign a MAC address to the card. Check the hardware manual to see whether or not this is the case.

Note: If the hardware didn't get set up correctly, the MAC address may not always appear as shown above.

The first six digits of the MAC address are the vendor ID. Check the entries against the list at http://www.cavebear.com/archive/cavebear/Ethernet/vendor.html to see if the vendor ID is valid. Then check the card ID (the last 6 digits). The card ID should be something semi-random. A display similar to 444444 is likely incorrect.