Background
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## Background

HomePlug® AV is an industry standard protocol for powerline communications developed by the HomePlug Powerline Alliance. Qualcomm Atheros manufactures a family of chipsets that conform to that standard and have MII, UART and SPI host interfaces. The INT6x00™ and AR7x00™ series are flagship members of that chipset family. The principle difference between the chipsets is their boot method, cost and speed. The INT6000™ requires onboard NVRAM but the INT6300™, INT6400™ and AR7400™ do not.

The HomePlug® AV protocol is based on IEEE-802.3, has ethertype `0x88E1` and uses special message formats. A subset of those message formats is reserved for each chipset vendor to define their own message formats. Qualcomm Atheros uses this vendor-specific subset to communicate between host processors and Qualcomm Atheros devices. This toolkit uses Qualcomm Atheros vendor-specific message formats to communicates with Qualcomm Atheros devices. It also understands Qualcomm Atheros firmware and configuration file formats.

This toolkit sends and receives Qualcomm Atheros vendor-specific messages but not generic HomePlug® AV messages. Qualcomm Atheros vendor-specific management message formats are described in the Qualcomm Atheros HomePlug® AV Firmware Technical Reference Manual. If you do not have a copy of this document then you may request one from Qualcomm Atheros.

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