Back to results
US 8,009,695 B2Granted
System and method for dynamically swapping master and slave PHYs to allow asymmetry in energy efficient ethernet
AssigneeBroadcom Corporation
InventorsWael William Diab, Scott Powell
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system and method for dynamically swapping master and slave physical layer devices (PHYs) in energy efficient Ethernet (EEE). A physical layer communication mechanism can be used to dynamically reassign the master/slave assignments to facilitate the asymmetric application of EEE to a link.
Claims9
An energy efficient Ethernet method, comprising:
- communicating between a first physical layer device and a second physical layer device via a network cable, said first physical layer device operating in a master mode and said second physical layer device operating in a slave mode, wherein a physical layer device operating in said slave mode recovers a clock from a received signal;
- after a determination that a first direction of transmission between a transmitter in said first physical layer device and a receiver in said second physical layer device should enter an outage interval, transmitting a control message from said first physical layer device to said second physical layer device, wherein during said outage interval a second direction of transmission between a transmitter in said second physical layer device and a receiver in said first physical layer device remains operative;
- switching said first physical layer device from said master mode to said slave mode, wherein said slave mode is responsive to said second physical layer device that has switched from said slave mode to said master mode in response to said transmitted control message;
- and
- following said switching, transitioning said first direction of transmission into an outage interval.
2 more elements
An energy efficient Ethernet method, comprising:
- operating a first physical layer device as a master physical layer device;
- determining whether a link rate of a first direction of a network cable link between said first physical layer device and a second physical layer device is to be reduced;
- and
- if it is determined that said link rate of said first direction of said network cable link is to be reduced, then transmitting a control message from said first physical layer device to said second physical layer device that is operating as a slave physical layer device, said control message requesting a reassignment of said second physical layer device from a slave physical layer device to a master physical layer device;
- and
- after said second physical layer device is reassigned as a master physical layer device, then reducing a link rate of said first direction of said network cable, while a link rate of a second direction of said network cable link between said first physical layer device and said second physical layer device is not reduced.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.