Can you please tell me what is preventing us from deprecating pauseparam
API *for autoneg* and using linkmodes which are completely unambiguous.

Just to make sure i understand you here...

You mean make use of

        ETHTOOL_LINK_MODE_Pause_BIT             = 13,
        ETHTOOL_LINK_MODE_Asym_Pause_BIT        = 14,

So i would do a ksettings_set() with

__ETHTOOL_LINK_MODE_LEGACY_MASK(Pause) | __ETHTOOL_LINK_MODE_LEGACY_MASK(Asym_Pause)

to indicate both pause and asym pause should be advertised.

The man page for ethtool does not indicate you can do this. It does
have a list of link mode bits you can pass via the advertise option to
ethtool -s, bit they are all actual link modes, not features like TP,
AUI, BNC, Pause, Backplane, FEC none, FEC baser, etc.

	Andrew