Examples described herein relate to a physical layer interface device with an interface to a medium and a link controller. The link controller can attempt to form a link with another device through the interface. Based on failure to achieve link using a last successful configuration, an attempt to form a link with another device through the interface can include interleaving use of an IEEE 802.3 compatible auto-negotiation process with at least one attempt to form a link using a non-auto-negotiated mode. Based on failure to achieve link with the another device using any available link speed mode and forward error correction (FEC) scheme, an attempt is made using IEEE 802.3 compatible auto-negotiation without use of Next Pages.