Networking: From the Ethernet MAC to the Link Partner – Maxime Chevallier & Antoine Ténart, Bootlin

October 30, 2023

In the network world, the link between the Ethernet MAC controller and the network media has become more complex. PHYs can now be chained, located in SFP modules and parts of the link are now hot-pluggable.

All the components of the link communicate using a wide range of standards such as RGMII, SGMII, QSGMII, 1000BASE-X, 1000BASE-T or 10GKR, and one easily gets lost.

In this talk, we’ll dive into these technologies and cover how Linux represents the link between the MAC and the link partner, with infrastructures such as phylink.

We’ll also give an overview of what composes the link and the standards used.

About Maxime Chevallier
Maxime joined Bootlin in 2018, where he does Embedded Linux and kernel development. Since then, he has been working on networking drivers, but he also has previous experience working on SPI drivers, Yocto Project BSP development and Real-Time topics.

About Antoine Tenart
Bootlin

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by The Linux Foundation

linux foundation