Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 2 Nov 2017 17:56:05 +0100 | From | Andrew Lunn <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 6/7] netdev: octeon-ethernet: Add Cavium Octeon III support. |
| |
> OK, now I think I understand. Yes, the MAC can be hardwired to a switch. > In fact, there are system designs that do exactly that. > > We try to handle this case by not having a "phy-handle" property in the > device tree. The link to the remote device (switch IC in this case) is > brought up on ndo_open()
O.K, so you totally ignore the Linux way of doing this and hack together your own proprietary solution.
> There may be opportunities to improve how this works in the future, but the > current code is serviceable.
It might be serviceable, but it will never get into mainline. For mainline, you need to use DSA.
http://elixir.free-electrons.com/linux/v4.9.60/source/Documentation/networking/dsa/dsa.txt
Getting back to my original point, having these platform devices can cause issues for DSA. Freescale FMAN has a similar architecture, and it took a while to restructure it to make DSA work.
https://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg459394.html
Andrew
| |