Patent 8004988 was granted and assigned to Microchip Technology on August, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An Ethernet controller has a buffer memory for receiving data packets, a data flow control unit for controlling the data flow to Ethernet controller, a packet counter, packet counter control logic for incrementing and decrementing the packet counter, a first register for storing a watermark, and a comparator logic coupled to the packet counter and the register for sending control signals to the data flow control unit.