On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 04:19:23PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:

I'd agree that there's a need for a state where we power down as much as 
possible (even at the cost of functionality), but where possible it 
would also be nice to offer a state where the mac is powered down and 
the phy left up.

There are PHYs which can detect that someone's on the other end even
when powered down..