Patent ID: 8238233

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a first processor to execute instructions; a subordinate processor coupled to the first processor, the subordinate processor including a generic processing engine corresponding to a general-purpose processor to remain enabled during a low power mode of a system, the generic processing engine to perform media access control (MAC) functionality for handling incoming packets of different packet types and from different physical devices, and a generic port filter to execute on the generic processing engine to filter the packets received from the plurality of physical devices including at least one wired device and at least one wireless device; and the plurality of physical devices coupled to the subordinate processor, each by a physical interconnect, the plurality of physical devices each corresponding to a different network communication protocol, each including a physical (PHY) unit to receive the incoming packets and forward the incoming packets to the subordinate processor while the system is in the low power mode, wherein at least one of the plurality of physical devices does not include a port filter; wherein the plurality of physical devices includes a memory, a graphics unit, a wireless local area network (WLAN) device, an input/output controller including a MAC unit of an Ethernet network interface, and an Ethernet device to be a network interconnect to an Ethernet network.