MediaTek and Airoha Ethernet PHY transceivers
Ethernet physical-layer transceivers built into MediaTek's MT7530/MT7531 switch chips, the MT7981/MT7988 router SoCs (Filogic series), and Airoha's AN7581/AN7583 10G-PON broadband chips. These parts handle the analog signaling for the gigabit and 2.5-gigabit Ethernet ports found in current Wi-Fi routers, gateways, and fiber CPE boxes.
recommendation
It should stay in the kernel because the hardware is current and actively shipping: MediaTek's Filogic 880 router platform and Airoha's AN7581 10G-PON chips are sold new in 2025, and OpenWrt still produces snapshots for these targets. Upstream activity is healthy too, with new chip support (MT7988 2.5GbE in May 2025, AN7583 in May 2025, AN7581 interrupt support in early 2026) landing on a regular cadence and no removal discussion in sight.
repository signals
sources
- patch.msgid.link
Upstream activity continued into January 2026 with AN7581 interrupt-enable support, indicating active maintenance rather than retirement.
- patch.msgid.link
The driver gained new hardware support for Airoha AN7583 in May 2025, showing expansion to new deployments.
- patch.msgid.link
The directory added support for the built-in MT7988 2.5GbE PHY in May 2025, consistent with current-generation SoC enablement.
- mediatek.com
MediaTek markets the Filogic 880 platform for current routers/gateways/APs and lists one 2.5GbE PHY plus four 1GbE ports, matching this driver's MT7988-class integrated PHY use case.
- airoha.com
Airoha markets the AN7581 series as a current 10G-PON SoC for ONU/CPE deployments, indicating supported hardware is still sold into broadband equipment.
- downloads.openwrt.org
OpenWrt still publishes current snapshots for the airoha target with an an7581 subtarget, showing ongoing downstream deployment and validation.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory: Kconfig/Makefile and source files define MDIO PHY drivers for MT7530/31, MT7981/88, and AN7581/83. Upstream evidence came from local shell inspection (`git -c safe.directory=... log -- drivers/net/phy/mediatek`) which showed steady 2024-2026 feature/fix traffic and recent patch.msgid links; a local shell grep for removal/deprecation terms found no actual removal series, only active maintenance. Deployment/new-sales evidence came from web search results on mediatek.com, airoha.com, and OpenWrt snapshot pages. Because the hardware family is current in router/PON CPE designs and there is no successor driver replacing this directory's scope, the correct recommendation is keep.