Patent ID: 8428248

Claim:
A power over Ethernet system, comprising: a master physical layer device; a plurality of slave physical layer devices, each of said plurality of slave physical layer devices having associated power source equipment controllers on an opposite side of a single isolation boundary from said master physical layer device; said master physical layer device including: one or more Ethernet transceivers; a first register space for storing information relating to said one or more Ethernet transceivers in said master physical layer device; a second register space for storing information relating to power source equipment controllers associated with slave physical layer devices; a first communication interface for receiving a first message having information relating to a first power source equipment controller associated with a first slave physical layer device in said plurality of slave physical layer devices; a second communication interface for transmitting a second message based on said first message to a controller device that facilitates passage of said second message to said first power source equipment controller associated with said first slave physical layer device.