Patent ID: 8509101

Claim:
A configurable communication system comprising: a small form-factor pluggable (SFP) transceiver comprising, an SFP configuration value, a device communication port, and a network communication port configured to communicatively couple the SFP transceiver to a network; and a communication device configurable in at least one of a first mode and a second mode based on a license entitlement key, the communication device comprising, a processor, a secret key, an SFP transceiver interface configured to communicatively couple the SFP transceiver to the communication device, a first machine-readable storage medium comprising, a configuration module executable by the processor, the configuration module configured to select a configuration setting based at least in part on the SFP configuration value, a license entitlement key generation module executable on the processor and configured to generate a license entitlement key based on the SFP configuration value and the secret key; wherein upon communicatively coupling the SFP transceiver to the communication device, the license entitlement key generation module generates the license entitlement key and the configuration module configures the communication device in one of the first mode and the second mode based on the generated license entitlement key, and wherein the communication device is configured in the first mode to process communications received via the network communication port according to a first communications protocol and is configured in the second mode to process communications received via the network communication port according to a second communications protocol.