Patent ID: 11924312
Assignee: MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY INCORPORATED
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 6:
7. A method, comprising:
operating a processor configured to operate in a sleep mode and in a normal operating mode; and
with a network interface card (NIC):
receiving incoming EtherCAT packets from an EtherCAT network originally issued by an EtherCAT master node; and
while the processor is in the sleep mode:
parsing the incoming EtherCAT packets;
determining whether a given incoming EtherCAT packet is a wake-on-LAN (WoL) packet by determining:
 that the given incoming EtherCAT packet is a broadcast packet;
 that the given incoming EtherCAT packet includes a predetermined value within a payload;
 that the given incoming EtherCAT packet includes an address of the EtherCAT device;
 that the given incoming EtherCAT packet includes an address of another EtherCAT device; or
 that the given incoming EtherCAT packet includes an address of the EtherCAT master node;
based on a determination that the given incoming EtherCAT packet is a WoL packet, generating a wake signal to the processor; and
forwarding the given incoming EtherCAT packet to another node in the EtherCAT network.