
KS8993F
Micrel
August 26, 2004
Revision 1.0
- 29 -
2.3.10 Auto Negotiation
The KS8993F conforms to the auto negotiation protocol as described by the 802.3 committee. Auto negotiation allows
UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair) link partners to select the best common mode of operation. In auto negotiation the link
partners advertise capabilities across the link to each other. If auto negotiation is not supported or the link partner to
the KS8993F is forced to bypass auto negotiation, then the mode is set by observing the signal at the receiver. This is
known as parallel mode because while the transmitter is sending auto negotiation advertisements, the receiver is
listening for advertisements or a fixed signal protocol.
The link set up is depicted in the following flow diagram.
Figure 3: Auto Negotiation and Parallel Detection
2.4
MAC and Switch Function
2.4.1
Address Look Up
The internal look up table stores MAC addresses and their associated information. It contains a 1K uni-cast address
table plus switching information. The KS8993F is guaranteed to learn 1K addresses and distinguishes itself from
hash-based look up tables, which depending on the operating environment and probabilities, may not guarantee the
absolute number of addresses it can learn.
2.4.2
Learning
The internal look up engine will update its table with a new entry if the following conditions are met:
Start Auto Negotiation
Force Link Setting
Listen for 10BaseT Link
Pulses
Listen for 100BaseTX
Idles
Attempt Auto
Negotiation
Link Mode Set
Bypass Auto Negotiation
and Set Link Mode
Link Mode Set ?
Parallel
Operation
Join Flow
No
Yes
No