[PATCH net-next v13 01/18] dt-bindings: net: Introduce the ethernet-connector description

Maxime Chevallier
2025-09-21T16:05:22Z

The ability to describe the physical ports of Ethernet devices is useful
to describe multi-port devices, as well as to remove any ambiguity with
regard to the nature of the port.

Moreover, describing ports allows for a better description of features
that are tied to connectors, such as PoE through the PSE-PD devices.

Introduce a binding to allow describing the ports, for now with 2
attributes :

- The number of lanes, which is a quite generic property that allows
differentating between multiple similar technologies such as BaseT1
and "regular" BaseT (which usually means BaseT4).

- The media that can be used on that port, such as BaseT for Twisted
Copper, BaseC for coax copper, BaseS/L for Fiber, BaseK for backplane
ethernet, etc. This allows defining the nature of the port, and
therefore avoids the need for vendor-specific properties such as
"micrel,fiber-mode" or "ti,fiber-mode".

The port description lives in its own file, as it is intended in the
future to allow describing the ports for phy-less devices.

Reviewed-by: Rob Herring (Arm) <robh@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Kory Maincent <kory.maincent@bootlin.com>
Reviewed-by: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>
Tested-by: Oleksij Rempel <o.rempel@pengutronix.de>
Tested-by: Florian Fainelli <florian.fainelli@broadcom.com>
Tested-by: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>
Signed-off-by: Maxime Chevallier <maxime.chevallier@bootlin.com>
---
.../bindings/net/ethernet-connector.yaml | 45 +++++++++++++++++++
.../devicetree/bindings/net/ethernet-phy.yaml | 18 ++++++++
MAINTAINERS | 1 +
3 files changed, 64 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/ethernet-connector.yaml

diff --git a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/ethernet-connector.yaml b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/ethernet-connector.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..32ae9f45b0e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/ethernet-connector.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: (GPL-2.0-only OR BSD-2-Clause)
+%YAML 1.2
+---
+$id: http://devicetree.org/schemas/net/ethernet-connector.yaml#
+$schema: http://devicetree.org/meta-schemas/core.yaml#
+
+title: Generic Ethernet Connector
+
+maintainers:
+ - Maxime Chevallier <maxime.chevallier@bootlin.com>
+
+description:
+ An Ethernet Connector represents the output of a network component such as
+ a PHY, an Ethernet controller with no PHY, or an SFP module.
+
+properties:
+
+ lanes:
+ description:
+ Defines the number of lanes on the port, that is the number of physical
+ channels used to convey the data with the link partner.
+ $ref: /schemas/types.yaml#/definitions/uint32
+
+ media:
+ description:
+ The mediums, as defined in 802.3, that can be used on the port.
+ enum:
+ - BaseT
+ - BaseK
+ - BaseS
+ - BaseC
+ - BaseL
+ - BaseD
+ - BaseE
+ - BaseF
+ - BaseV
+ - BaseMLD
+
+required:
+ - lanes
+ - media
+
+additionalProperties: true
+
+...
diff --git a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/ethernet-phy.yaml b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/ethernet-phy.yaml
index 71e2cd32580f..64bd23b7073d 100644
--- a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/ethernet-phy.yaml
+++ b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/ethernet-phy.yaml
@@ -277,6 +277,17 @@ properties:

additionalProperties: false

+ mdi:
+ type: object
+
+ patternProperties:
+ '^connector-[a-f0-9]+$':
+ $ref: /schemas/net/ethernet-connector.yaml#
+
+ unevaluatedProperties: false
+
+ additionalProperties: false
+
required:
- reg

@@ -313,5 +324,12 @@ examples:
default-state = "keep";
};
};
+ /* Fast Ethernet port, with only 2 pairs wired */
+ mdi {
+ connector-0 {
+ lanes = <2>;
+ media = "BaseT";
+ };
+ };
};
};
diff --git a/MAINTAINERS b/MAINTAINERS
index a8a770714101..1ed1d0267bec 100644
--- a/MAINTAINERS
+++ b/MAINTAINERS
@@ -9114,6 +9114,7 @@ R: Russell King <linux@armlinux.org.uk>
L: netdev@vger.kernel.org
S: Maintained
F: Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-class-net-phydev
+F: Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/ethernet-connector.yaml
F: Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/ethernet-phy.yaml
F: Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/mdio*
F: Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/qca,ar803x.yaml
--
2.49.0