"float PHYs", communication between indirect attached devices

[Adrian Chadd]

On 10 December 2011 23:05, Aleksandr Rybalko <ray at freebsd.org> wrote:
> Hi net@ subscribers,
>
> Simple explanation of problem:
> real situation, device with two NICs (arge0 and arge1)
> arge0 attached to PHY w/o direct access to it.
> arge1 attached to switch MII port (and have access to MDIO bus).
>
> switch have child MDIO bus for all Physical ports.
> One of this ports (or his PHY) must be controlled by arge0.

Must be controlled how/why?

Please explain this a little more first. I have a feeling that you
want to magically make it able to configure the PHY it's glued to, so
changing speed/duplex/clock and such are kept in sync.

We can likely just ignore that and just allow the user to configure
both the arge{0,1} interface and the PHY it's glued to. Then it's just
up to documenting that particular ugly requirement for now.

Read: This shouldn't be a blocker for further development. :)


Adrian