Patent ID: 8018924

Claim:
A network device, comprising: a multi-port media access controller (MAC) device that comprises a plurality of MAC devices, wherein some of the plurality of MAC devices output respective data streams at different speeds, a plurality of speed translators configured to translate the speeds of the respective data streams to a speed greater than a highest output speed of any MAC device among the plurality of MAC devices and to generate parallel speed translated data streams; a multiplexer configured to multiplex the parallel speed translated data streams to generate a multiplexed data stream at the speed that is greater than the highest output speed defined by the parallel speed translated data streams; and a first serializer and deserializer (SERDES) configured to receive the multiplexed data stream that is encoded at a physical coding sublayer (PCS) and to serially transmit the multiplexed data stream to a multi-port physical layer (PHY) device.