- <description>
- <p>ifplugstatus is an utility which may be used to detect the link
- status of a local Linux ethernet device, much in the same way
- mii-diag, mii-tool and ethtool work. In fact it supports all
- three different APIs these three tools use. In addition it supports
- link checking with the IFF_RUNNING interface flag, which most modern
- drivers (not only ethernet) support, and association status checking
- with the wireless extension API for WLAN devices.</p>
-
- <p>The APIs are tried in the following order:</p>
-
- <p>First the newest API: <arg>SIOCETHTOOL</arg> (aka ethtool API)</p>
- <p>Second the next older API: <arg>SIOCGMIIREG</arg> (aka mii-diag API)</p>
- <p>Than the WLAN API: <arg>wireless extension</arg> (aka iwconfig API)</p>
- <p>Followed by the cleanest API: <arg>IFF_RUNNING</arg> (aka ifconfig API)</p>
-
- <p>The oldest API (<arg>SIOCPRIV</arg> aka mii-tool API) is not tested since it is obsolete.</p>
-
- <p>ifplugstatus may be used in shell script since it returns the
- current status as return value. It is especially useful to
- detect the available APIs on the used network driver. (Option
- <opt>-v</opt>)</p>