Patent ID: 7293118

Claim:
An apparatus for coupling a host to one or more peripherals, comprising: a hub having an upstream port for coupling with the host and one or more downstream ports for coupling with the one or more peripherals; and a local host dynamically coupled with said upstream port, said local host provided with program code to perform one or more operations to act as a host for the one or more peripherals when the host is not coupled with the upstream port; wherein when the host is coupled with the upstream port, the local host disconnects from the upstream port so that the host communicates with the one or more peripherals through the hub and the local host is in a low-power mode and the hub operates in a normal power mode to couple the host with the one or more peripherals, and wherein a state of whether the host remains coupled with the upstream port is periodically monitored to detect if the host becomes disconnected from the upstream port.