real time control of the buffering in operation eee control module 318 alerts pause circuit 312 that a pause frame should be generated for example eee control module 318 can alert pause circuit 312 that a pause frame should be generated when eee control module 318 determines that the eee phy is to enter a low power consumption mode as would be appreciated the decision to transition into or out of the low power consumption mode can be based on various eee considerations in general eee control mechanisms can touch a number of devices and software throughout the stack and across the link regardless of the particular eee control policy mechanism that is implemented eee control module 318 can generate the trigger for pause circuit 312 to generate a pause frame for the mac as an example assume that a 10 g ethernet controller does not have any hardware support for an eee enhanced phy 39 s low power consumption mode this transition into the low power consumption mode can be based on a request from the link partner or the device 39 s own eee control policy e g triggered when the pcie goes into an l1 state buffer level hits a watermark rate of change of a traffic queue hits a threshold etc as the eee enhanced phy initiates its transition into the low power consumption mode eee control module 318 instructs pause circuit 312 to generate a pause frame that is sent up to the.