Patent ID: 8873591

Claim:
A physical layer device, comprising: a plurality of input interfaces operating at a first rate; one or more output interfaces operating at a second rate, wherein the second rate is substantially higher than the first rate; and a gearbox configured to bit-multiplex physical-layer data streams received through the plurality of input interfaces to generate multiplexed physical-layer data streams that are output through the one or more output interfaces, wherein each of the physical-layer data streams includes an embedded physical-layer data stream identifier, the gearbox including a virtual lane state machine configured to: detect the physical-layer data stream identifier in each of the physical layer data streams, determine a corresponding output interface from among a plurality of output interfaces corresponding to each of the physical layer data streams based upon the detected physical-layer data stream identifiers, and adjust each physical layer data stream to output each of the physical layer data streams to the corresponding output interface.