Method And System For Energy Efficient Signaling For 100MBPS Ethernet Using A Subset Technique

Abstract

Aspects of a method and system for energy efficient signaling for 100 mbps Ethernet using a subset are provided. In this regard, a network device enabled to communicate over a network link at 1 Gbps or faster may be configured to communicate over the network link at, or approximately at, 100 Mbps by reducing a number of active channels over which the network device communicates and/or reducing a size of a signal constellation utilized by the network device to encode data. The device may communicate according to 1GBASE-T or 10GBASE-T standards. The number of active channels may be reduced to a single bidirectional channel or two unidirectional channels. The signal constellation may be reduced to two or three levels. One or more components of the network device may be unnecessary for recovering data when communicating at 100 Mbps and may thus be powered down, or placed into a lower power mode.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.