[PATCH net-next v12 10/10] Documentation: networking: Update the phy_port infrastructure description
From: Maxime Chevallier <maxime.chevallier@bootlin.com>
Date: 2026-06-15 15:39:50
Also in:
lkml
Subsystem:
documentation, ethernet phy library, networking [ethtool phy port], networking [general], the rest · Maintainers:
Jonathan Corbet, Andrew Lunn, Heiner Kallweit, Maxime Chevallier, "David S. Miller", Eric Dumazet, Jakub Kicinski, Paolo Abeni, Linus Torvalds
With SFP now properly supported with phy_port, add some details in the documentation. Fix a typo along the way (driver -> driven). Signed-off-by: Maxime Chevallier <maxime.chevallier@bootlin.com> --- Documentation/networking/phy-port.rst | 26 +++++++++++++++++++++----- 1 file changed, 21 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/networking/phy-port.rst b/Documentation/networking/phy-port.rst
index 6e28d9094bce..73ea06db0fd9 100644
--- a/Documentation/networking/phy-port.rst
+++ b/Documentation/networking/phy-port.rst@@ -99,13 +99,29 @@ will eventually be able to report its own ksettings:: (_____)-----| Port | +------+ +SFP ports +========= + +SFP interfaces involve 2 distinct components, each represented by +a :c:type:`struct phy_port <phy_port>` instance : + + - The SFP cage itself is a :c:type:`struct phy_port <phy_port>`. It's special + in that it's not an MDI interface, but rather a hot-pluggable MII. + The :c:type:`struct phy_port <phy_port>` associated to it lists the different + MII interfaces we can use on the cage. + + - The SFP module, when inserted, will also be associated to a + :c:type:`struct phy_port <phy_port>`, that represents the various linkmodes + that it gives access to. The module's :c:type:`struct phy_port <phy_port>` + doesn't supersedes the cage's port, it references it through + the :c:type:`struct phy_port <phy_port>`. :c:member:`upstream_port` field. + Next steps ========== -As of writing this documentation, only ports controlled by PHY devices are -supported. The next steps will be to add the Netlink API to expose these -to userspace and add support for raw ports (controlled by some firmware, and directly -managed by the NIC driver). +As of writing this documentation, the port's presence and information can only +be queried, and it's not possible to change any of the port's settings or select +which one should be used. Another parallel task is the introduction of a MII muxing framework to allow the -control of non-PHY driver multi-port setups. +control of non-PHY driven multi-port setups.
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2.54.0