Monitoring of connection between network devices in a packet-based communication system

摘要

The invention concerns the establishment of the rate of transmission of data between two network stations by means of auto-negotiation. The execution of an auto-negotiation sequence by a state machine is counted and if the number of executions of the sequence exceeds a threshold, the auto-negotiation sequence is modified to establish a data rate lower than a previously negotiated rate. A particular example is described for use in accordance with IEEE standard 802.3. In a specific example, monitoring of the execution of the auto-negotiation sequence comprises counting the occurrences of a "page received' bit in an auto-negotiation expansion register.