[PATCH net-next v20 03/14] net: phy: Introduce PHY ports representation

[Maxime Chevallier]

Hi Russell,

On 27/11/2025 19:04, Russell King (Oracle) wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 06:17:46PM +0100, Maxime Chevallier wrote:
>> Ethernet provides a wide variety of layer 1 protocols and standards for
>> data transmission. The front-facing ports of an interface have their own
>> complexity and configurability.
>>
>> Introduce a representation of these front-facing ports. The current code
>> is minimalistic and only support ports controlled by PHY devices, but
>> the plan is to extend that to SFP as well as raw Ethernet MACs that
>> don't use PHY devices.
>>
>> This minimal port representation allows describing the media and number
>> of pairs of a BaseT port. From that information, we can derive the
>> linkmodes usable on the port, which can be used to limit the
>> capabilities of an interface.
>>
>> For now, the port pairs and medium is derived from devicetree, defined
>> by the PHY driver, or populated with default values (as we assume that
>> all PHYs expose at least one port).
>>
>> The typical example is 100M ethernet. 100BaseT can work using only 2
>> pairs on a Cat 5 cables.
> 
> Correction: 100BASE-TX. 100BASE-T, which covers the family of 100BASE-T
> media, includes 100BASE-T4 which is over all four pairs of the cable.
> 
 As Rob's bot made what appears at a first glance to be incorrect
comments, I'm not sure a resend is on the table yet. Do you want me to
send a v21 with the updated description ? I have the same question about
your comment on patch 2 :)

I'll gladly resend, but that'll be after the 24h cooldown.

Thanks a lot for taking a look a this,

Maxime