[PATCH 1/3] driver: net: ethernet: cpsw: implement ethtool get/set phy setting

[Peter Korsgaard]

>>>>> "Mugunthan" == Mugunthan V N <mugunthanvnm at ti.com> writes:

Hi,

 M> +- ethtool-active-slave	: Specifies the slave to use for ethtool command
 >> 
 >> That again sounds like something Linux specific rather than a hardware
 >> property.
 >> 
 >> It would be good if all these special things (dual emac mode, vlan
 >> handling, switching) could be handled using the existing kernel
 >> (bridging/vlan) infrastructure, and the driver always just exposing 2
 >> network interfaces instead of these configuration properties.

 Mugunthan> Switch and Dual Emac modes of operation of CPSW are two
 Mugunthan> different features of the hardware and packet routing
 Mugunthan> between the slaves in the hardware are different in both the
 Mugunthan> modes.

 Mugunthan> If by default it is brought up as Dual EMAC then hardware
 Mugunthan> switching is blocked and use-cases like IP phone etc cannot
 Mugunthan> be achieved.

Well, you could use the (sw) bridge functionality of the kernel network
stack, but performance naturally wouldn't be as good.

 Mugunthan> Since CPSW as a hardware Switch, it cannot not be handled in
 Mugunthan> existing kernel feature.

Well, we do have net/dsa, which is conceptually quite similar (even
though it has never been extended to hook into the bridging stuff). I
agree that we don't have infrastructure to handle hw like cpsw in a
really good way today, but it would be very nice to move towards it.

-- 
Bye, Peter Korsgaard