Consider the situation where a macb netdev is connected through a phydev that sits on a mii bus other than the one provided to this particular netdev. This situation is what this patchset aims to accomplish through the existing phy-handle optional binding. This optional binding (as described in the ethernet DT bindings doc) directs the netdev to the phydev to use. This is precisely the situation this patchset aims to solve, so it makes sense to introduce the functionality to this driver (where the physical layout discussed was encountered). The devicetree snippet would look something like this: ... ethernet@feedf00d { ... phy-handle = <&phy0> // the first netdev is physically wired to phy0 ... phy0: phy@0 { ... reg = <0x0> // MDIO address 0 ... } phy1: phy@1 { ... reg = <0x1> // MDIO address 1 ... } ... } ethernet@deadbeef { ... phy-handle = <&phy1> // tells the driver to use phy1 on the // first mac's mdio bus (it's wired thusly) ... } ... The work done to add the phy_node in the first place (dacdbb4dfc1a1: "net: macb: add fixed-link node support") will consume the device_node (if found). v2: Reorganization of mii probe/init functions, suggested by Andrew Lunn v3: Moved some of the bus init code back into init (erroneously moved to probe) some style issues, and an unintialized variable warning addressed. v4: Add Reviewed-by: tags Skip fallback code if phy-handle phandle is found -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe devicetree" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html