Patent ID: 7308517

Claim:
A device for use in a first node of a serial bus, the device comprising: a first module adapted to ping a second node; a second module adapted to receive a ping response from the second node; a third module adapted to calculate a maximum round trip delay between a first PHY associated with the first node and a second PHY associated with the second node based at least in part upon a jitter value, and further based at least in part on the ping response sent to the second module; and a fourth module adapted to send a configuration packet to all PHYs on the serial bus, the configuration packet containing a gap count, the gap count derived from the maximum round trip delay between the first PHY and the second PHY; wherein at least one of said first PHY and second PHY comprises a first pair of ports and a second pair of ports and the jitter value is defined as being greater than or equal to the absolute value of a total quantity, the total quantity defined as the difference between a first quantity and a second quantity; and wherein the first quantity comprises the sum of a first sub-quantity and a second sub-quantity, the first sub-quantity consisting of a PHY delay between the first ordered pair of ports divided by two, the second sub-quantity consisting of an arbitration response delay between the first ordered pair of ports divided by two.