mii(4) - NetBSD Manual Pages

MII(4)                    NetBSD Programmer's Manual                    MII(4)


NAME

     mii - IEEE 802.3 Media Independent Interface network bus


SYNOPSIS

     exphy*  at mii? phy ?         # 3Com internal PHYs
     icsphy* at mii? phy ?         # Integrated Circuit Systems ICS1890 PHYs
     inphy*  at mii? phy ?         # Intel 82555 PHYs
     iophy*  at mii? phy ?         # Intel 82553 PHYs
     lxtphy* at mii? phy ?         # Level One LXT-970 PHYs
     nsphy*  at mii? phy ?         # National Semiconductor NS83840 PHYs
     qsphy*  at mii? phy ?         # Quality Semiconductor QS6612 PHYs
     sqphy*  at mii? phy ?         # Seeq 80220/80221/80223 PHYs
     tlphy*  at mii? phy ?         # ThunderLAN internal PHYs
     tqphy*  at mii? phy ?         # TSC Semiconductor 78Q2120 PHYs
     ukphy*  at mii? phy ?         # Generic/unknown PHYs


DESCRIPTION

     Media Independent Interface is an IEEE standard serial bus for connecting
     MACs (network controllers) to PHYs (physical media interfaces).  The mii
     layer allows network device drivers to share support code for various PHY
     models, and allows unused support for PHYs which are not present in a
     system to be removed from the kernel.

     Network device drivers which use the mii layer carry the ``mii'' autocon-
     figuration attribute.  This allows kernel configuration files to simply
     specify PHYs as described above in the synopsis.

     The following is an example of the messages displayed when a network in-
     terface with an attached PHY is detected by the kernel:

           epic0 at pci0 dev 12 function 0: SMC EPIC/100 Fast Ethernet
           epic0: interrupting at kn20aa irq 4
           epic0: SMC9432TX, Ethernet address 00:e0:29:07:17:c4
           qsphy0 at epic0 phy 3: QS6612 10/100 media interface, rev. 1
           qsphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto

     All PHY drivers display the media types supported by the PHY when it is
     detected by the kernel.  These media types are valid media keywords for
     use with the ifconfig(8) program.


SEE ALSO

     exphy(4), icsphy(4), ifmedia(4), inphy(4), iophy(4), intro(4), lxtphy(4),
     nsphy(4), qsphy(4), sqphy(4), tlphy(4), tqphy(4), ukphy(4), ifconfig(8)

NetBSD 1.5                     November 3, 1998                              1