MIIBUS(4)

NAME
miibus - IEEE 802.3 Media Independent Interface network bus

SYNOPSIS
For most network interface cards (NIC):
device miibus

DESCRIPTION
The miibus driver provides an interconnection between the Media Access Control (MAC) sublayer, the Physical Layer entities (PHY), Station Management (STA) entities, and the PHY Layer as defined by the IEEE 802.3 Standard.

The miibus layer allows network device drivers to share common support code for various external PHY devices. Most 10/100 network interface cards either use an MII transceiver or have built-in transceivers that can be programmed using an MII interface. The miibus driver currently handles all of the media detection, selection, and reporting using the ifmedia(4) interface. A generic driver has been included for all PHYs that are not handled by a specific driver, this is possible because all 10/100 PHYs implement the same general register set along with their vendor specific register set.

The following network device drivers use the miibus interface:

ae(4)
    Attansic/Atheros L2 FastEthernet
age(4)
    Attansic/Atheros L1 Gigabit Ethernet
alc(4)
    Atheros AR8131/AR8132 Gigabit/Fast Ethernet
ale(4)
    Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 Gigabit/Fast Ethernet
aue(4)
    ADMtek USB Ethernet
axe(4)
    ASIX Electronics AX88172 USB Ethernet
axge(4)
    ASIX Electronics AX88178A/AX88179 USB Gigabit Ethernet
bce(4)
    Broadcom BCM5706/BCM5708 Gigabit Ethernet
bfe(4)
    Broadcom BCM440x 10/100 Ethernet
bge(4)
    Broadcom BCM570xx Gigabit Ethernet
dc(4)
    DEC/Intel 21143 and various workalikes
et(4)
    Agere ET1310 10/100/1000 Ethernet
fxp(4)
    Intel EtherExpress PRO/100B
jme(4)
    JMicron Gigabit Ethernet
lge(4)
    Level 1 LXT1001 NetCellerator Gigabit Ethernet
mos(4)
    Moschip MCS7730/MCS7830/MCS7832 USB Ethernet
msk(4)
    Marvell/SysKonnect Yukon II Gigabit Ethernet
nfe(4)
    NVIDIA nForce MCP 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet
nge(4)
    National Semiconductor DP83820/DP83821 Gigabit Ethernet
pcn(4)
    AMD Am79C97x PCI 10/100
re(4)
    RealTek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S
rl(4)
    RealTek 8129/8139
sf(4)
    Adaptec AIC-6915
sis(4)
    Silicon Integrated Systems SiS 900/SiS 7016
sk(4)
    SysKonnect SK-984x and SK-982x Gigabit Ethernet
ste(4)
    Sundance ST201 (D-Link DFE-550TX)
stge(4)
    Sundance/Tamarack TC9021 Gigabit Ethernet
tl(4)
    Texas Instruments ThunderLAN
tx(4)
    SMC EtherPower II (83c170)
udav(4)
    Davicom DM9601 USB Ethernet
vge(4)
    VIA Networking Technologies VT6122 PCI Gigabit Ethernet
vr(4)
    VIA Rhine, Rhine II
wb(4)
    Winbond W89C840F
xl(4)
    3Com 3c90x

COMPATIBILITY
The implementation of miibus was originally intended to have similar API interfaces to BSD/OS 3.0 and NetBSD, but as a result are not well behaved newbus device drivers.

SEE ALSO
ae(4), age(4), alc(4), ale(4), arp(4), aue(4), axe(4), axge(4), bce(4), bfe(4), bge(4), dc(4), et(4), fxp(4), jme(4), lge(4), mos(4), msk(4), netintro(4), nfe(4), nge(4), pcn(4), re(4), rl(4), sf(4), sis(4), sk(4), ste(4), stge(4), tl(4), tx(4), udav(4), vge(4), vr(4), wb(4), xl(4)

STANDARDS
More information on MII can be found in the IEEE 802.3 Standard.

HISTORY
The miibus driver first appeared in FreeBSD 3.3.

AUTHORS
This manual page was written by Tom Rhodes <trhodes@FreeBSD.org>.