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Message-ID: <CAGVrzcbF+24ouTGxMwsu3-QCi=JeHEcS7BqBceGBX7Jf+e7BdQ@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 19:29:53 +0100
From: Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@...il.com>
To: Gary Thomas <gary@...assoc.com>
Cc: Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@...arflare.com>,
netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: SMSC 9303 support
Hello,
2013/9/24 Gary Thomas <gary@...assoc.com>:
> On 2013-09-24 10:51, Ben Hutchings wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 2013-09-24 at 06:21 -0600, Gary Thomas wrote:
>>>
>>> I need to support the SMSC9303 in an embedded system. I'm not
>>> finding any [explicit] support for this device in the latest
>>> mainline kernel. Did I miss something?
>>>
>>> To be clear, the SMSC9303 is a 3-port managed ethernet switch
>>> capable of supporting 802.1D/802.1Q directly. This switch is
>>> driven by a single MAC via MII/RMII and exposes the other two
>>> ports via physical PHYs. What I need it to do is behave like
>>> two external, separate devices. I was thinking that what I need
>>> to do is treat these as VLAN devices since the switch can manage
>>> the routing.
>>>
>>> Does this seem like a reasonable approach?
>>
>>
>> Linux has 'DSA' (Distributed Switch Architecture) which supports tagging
>> of packets to indicate which switch port they are sent or received
>> through. This was originally added to support some Marvell switch chips
>> and I don't know whether it would be suitable or extensible for this
>> one.
>
>
> I've used the DSA stuff for years (worked directly with the Marvell folks
> when it was being developed). It might work for this device, I'll think
> some more about using it although I was hoping for a lighter weight
> solution.
I do not think DSA is suitable for pure 802.1q switches such as this
one. OpenWrt has an out of tree patch which adds some switch-specific
operations that can be controlled over netlink (currently trying to
get them in a shape where they can be submitted for mainline
inclusion) [1], which I think is much more suitable than DSA or any
other proprietary switch tagging mechanism.
[1]: https://dev.openwrt.org/browser/trunk/target/linux/generic/files/drivers/net/phy/swconfig.c
--
Florian
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