Patent ID: 7552350

Claim:
An information processing system comprising: a frame or enclosure for mounting a plurality of devices; a backplane having a plurality of backplane electrical connectors disposed within said frame or enclosure; a plurality of devices, each including a device electrical connector, matingly coupled to said backplane electrical connectors, said plurality of devices including at least one network device for coupling said system with an external network, wherein said at least one network device is configured to operate in a first mode having a first maximum performance level and a first power consumption rate, and a third mode having a third maximum performance level lower than said first maximum performance level and a third power consumption rate lower than said first power consumption rate; and a power manager disposed within said frame or enclosure and coupled to said at least one network device, said power manager being configured to determine an operating mode for said at least one network device selected from said first and third modes based on predetermined policies, and to direct said at least one network device to operate in said determined operating mode; and further wherein said network device includes a processor and said system further includes an activity monitor configured to detect a level of activity of said processor, said activity monitor configured to monitor network layer activity in the form of TCP/IP protocol data packets, and the performance of the processor is incrementally lowered by said power manager using said mode control until data packets start dropping indicating that the processor performance is at the limit of adequacy and then increasing the processor performance by a specified increment to act as a safety margin to provide reliable communication of the packets.