Patent ID: 8799633

Claim:
A device comprising: a main network controller block having an associated device Media Access Control (MAC) address, and configured to enter a low-power mode when so instructed; and an Ethernet physical layer (ePHY) block wherein the ePHY block is separately powered from the main network controller block and the ePHY block comprises a first register, and wherein the main network controller block is configured to write the device MAC address into the first register when the device initially boots up; the ePHY block is configured to: detect a Wake-On-LAN (WOL) packet comprising a target MAC address, while the main network controller block is in low-power mode; compare the target MAC address with the device MAC address; and generate an interrupt signal to initiate a boot up of the main network controller block if the main network controller block is in the low-power mode and the comparison indicates that the target MAC address matches the device MAC address.