Patent ID: 7646735

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a switching input of a tri-state buffer provided on a PCI-compliant (Personal Computer Interface) front card comprising an FE MAC (fast Ethernet media access controller) in a router, a sensing signal from a back card comprising an FE Phy (physical layer) in the router, where the tri-state buffer is serially disposed on a IDSEL (identification select) line corresponding to a particular channel, where the tri-state buffer is connected to both a pull up component located on the front card and a pull down component located on the front card; if the sensing signal is a logical low, then coupling a IDSEL signal corresponding to a particular channel of the back card to the front card; and if the sensing signal is not low, then decoupling the IDSEL signal from the front card and providing a logical low signal in the place of the IDSEL signal.