Methods and Apparatuses For Serial Bus Sideband Communications

Abstract

Methods and apparatuses that utilize a serial bus, such as a universal serial bus (USB), for communications between a communications network, a computing device, and an auxiliary device are disclosed. Some embodiments comprise methods handling sideband communications using serial buses. One or more of the embodiments comprise differentiating in-band data from out-of-band data, transferring information of the in-band data between a communications network and a computing device, and transferring information of the out-of-band data between the communications network and an auxiliary device. Some embodiments comprise an apparatus having a communications network interface, an auxiliary device interface, and a computing device interface. Of the interfaces, one or more may be a serial bus interface. The apparatus may differentiate between in-band and out-of-band data and communicate information of the out-of-band data to an auxiliary device. In some embodiments, the apparatus may also transfer control information. In some embodiments, information may be routed based upon cyclic redundancy check (CRC) information.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.