Patent ID: 8412051

Claim:
An optical transceiver according to a multi-source agreement, comprising: circuitry configured to provide framing and forward error correction integrated within the optical transceiver; transmit optics coupled to the circuitry; receive optics coupled to the circuitry; a housing, wherein the circuitry, the transmit optics, and the receive optics are disposed in or on the housing, and wherein the housing is compliant to the multi-source agreement; and a controller communicatively coupled to the circuitry, wherein the controller is configured to communicate to the host system via a management data input/output (MDIO) interface or I2C, wherein the controller is configured to communicate data related to operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning and the framing and forward error correction via the MDIO or I2C interface; wherein the multi-source agreement defines one of a 40G or 100G optical transceiver; wherein the optical transceiver is configured to operate within a host system according to the multi-source agreement; and wherein the data is communicated via undefined or reserved registers in the MDIO or I2C interface thereby preserving the multi-source agreement.