Patent ID: 8117356

Claim:
A network interface controller, comprising: at least one interface to a physical layer device (PHY); at least one Ethernet media access controller (MAC) communicatively coupled to the at least one interface to the PHY; at least one peripheral component interconnect interface; at least one direct memory access (DMA) controller to transfer data, including packets received via the at least one interface to the PHY and the at least one MAC, to a host via the at least one peripheral component interconnect interface; at least one host accessible register to store configuration settings to be received from the host, the configuration settings comprising: a host programmable timer value specifying a recurring timer interval to transfer operation statistics of the network interface controller by DMA to memory of the host; a location in the memory of the host to transfer the operation statistics to; at least one indication of a one-shot, non-recurring, transfer of the operation statistics; at least one indication of a selection of the operation statistics; and circuitry configured to, when in operation: in response to the host storing the configuration settings for a one-shot request in the at least one register, perform a non-recurring, one time DMA transfer of the operation statistics to the memory of the host via the peripheral component interconnect interface; and in response to the host storing the configuration settings for the recurring timer interval, repeatedly causing transfer of the operation statistics of the network interface controller by DMA to the memory of the host based on periodicity specified by the host programmable timer value.