Patent ID: 11940943
Assignee: ANALOG DEVICES INTERNATIONAL UNLIMITED COMPANY
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 14:
15. A method of controlling operation of a multi-drop switched network in which all network nodes see all the data that is transmitted on a shared network link, the method comprising:
sending, by a first network master node, a multicast read frame to multiple network slave nodes coupled to the shared network link;
receiving the multicast read frame into a frame queue of a first network interface module of a first network slave node using a half-duplex port coupled to the shared network link;
decoding, by the first network interface module, a read command for a host device coupled to the first network interface module included in a payload of the multicast read frame that includes multiple read commands for other network slave nodes of the multiple network slave nodes; and
transmitting a response frame including read data on the shared network link when detecting the shared network link is available for transmitting;
receiving a multicast write frame into the frame queue of the first network interface module using a first external interface of the first network interface module, wherein the first external interface is connected to the shared network link;
extracting write data from a specified portion of the multicast write frame that includes multiple portions containing write data for other network slave nodes of the multiple network slave nodes; and
sending the extracted write data to the host device using a second external interface of the first network interface module.