Patent ID: 7720385

Claim:
A fiberoptic communications apparatus for communication of a plurality of data communications protocols over a single fiberoptic link between at least two locations, comprising: a motherboard card having a processor and a memory; and a plurality of modular cards coupled to the motherboard card and capable of communicating with each other via a daisy chain configuration, each of the modular cards configurable as an optical communication card including an optical transceiver and couplable to the single fiberoptic link, or as a data communication card supporting one or more data communication protocols, via user downloadable firmware, wherein one of the plurality of modular cards is configured as the optical communication card and the remaining of the plurality of modular cards are configured as data communication cards, wherein each of the data communication cards is configured to communicate its respective configuration and position in the daisy chain to the optical communication card, and wherein the optical communication card is configured to control the data communication cards and assign time and data transmission duration for each of the data communication cards based on the respective configuration and position of each data communication cards, and transmit data received from a respective data communication card over the single fiberoptic link based on the respective assigned time and data transmission duration.