Patent ID: 6859825

Claim:
A network interface system comprising: a plurality of physical layer devices (PHYs), each configured for communicating network data to a link partner according to one of an autonegotiation protocol with the corresponding link partner and prescribed configuration information from a shared management data bus; a plurality of network interface devices (NIDs), each NID respectively corresponding to one of the PHYs, and each NID having a media access controller (MAC), with at least one of the NIDs configured as a master NID for communicating configuration information between the PHYs and a configuration source, the shared management data bus coupling together each of the PHYs and to which the master NID is coupled and carrying the prescribed configuration information and autonegotiation results; and a configuration source coupled to the NIDs, the configuration source configured to receive the autonegotiation results from each PHY through the master NID and send MAC configuration information to the MAC in each of the NIDs to configure the MAC of each NID in accordance with the autonegotiation results for the corresponding PHY.