MII(4) | Device Drivers Manual | MII(4)

# NAME

`mii` — IEEE 802.3 Media Independent Interface

# SYNOPSIS

`acphy* at mii?`
`amphy* at mii?`
`atphy* at mii?`
`bmtphy* at mii?`
`brgphy* at mii?`
`ciphy* at mii?`
`dcphy* at mii?`
`eephy* at mii?`
`etphy* at mii?`
`exphy* at mii?`
`gentbi* at mii?`
`icsphy* at mii?`
`ipgphy* at mii?`
`inphy* at mii?`
`iophy* at mii?`
`jmphy* at mii?`
`luphy* at mii?`
`lxtphy* at mii?`
`mtdphy* at mii?`
`nsgphy* at mii?`
`nsphy* at mii?`
`nsphyter* at mii?`
`qsphy* at mii?`
`rdcphy* at mii?`
`rgephy* at mii?`
`rlphy* at mii?`
`sqphy* at mii?`
`tlphy* at mii?`
`tqphy* at mii?`
`txphy* at mii?`
`ukphy* at mii?`
`urlphy* at mii?`
`xmphy* at mii?`
`ytphy* at mii?`

# 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” autoconfiguration attribute. This allows kernel configuration files to simply specify PHYs as described above in SYNOPSIS.

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

    hme0 at sbus0 slot 1 offset 0x8c00000 pri 7: address 08:00:20:22:86:b8 rev 34
    nsphy0 at hme0 phy 1: DP83840 10/100 PHY, rev. 1

Supported media types for the PHY can be displayed or set using the ifconfig(8) `media` keyword.

# SEE ALSO

ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), ifconfig(8)

March 6, 2023 | Debian