Patent ID: 6973044

Claim:
A system for reducing bandwidth consumed by gathering statistical data via a half-duplex communication bus, comprising: a system controller gathering statistical data via a half-duplex communication bus; at least one element in the system also on the half-duplex communication bus, said element: (i) in a controlled manner, automatically pre-gathering the statistical data in an information buffer in the element; and (ii) reporting a subset of the statistical data in the buffer to the system controller in response to being polled at times when polled for the statistical data and at other times when polled for a reason other than for the statistical data; the automatic pre-gathering and subsequent reporting of statistical data reducing the number of communications and data transfer cycles required to transfer the statistical data from the element to the system controller resulting in a reduction of bandwidth consumed by gathering the statistical data from the element via the half-duplex communication bus; and the system controller determining if the statistical data is up-to-date and accessing the at least one element for the statistical data only if the age of the statistical data in the controller is older than a predefined threshold indicating that the statistical data was not timely sent in place of a null response by the at least one element.