Patent ID: 7907630

Claim:
An apparatus comprising; a media interface card having a first Input/Output (I/O) port for communication via a protocol selected from the group consisting of T1, E1, T2, E2, T3, E3, DS4, E4, DS1, DS2, DS3, 1 MB Ethernet, 10 MB Ethernet, 100 MB Ethernet, 1 GB Ethernet, 10 GB Ethernet, Backplane Ethernet, resilient packet ring, Frame Relay, VDSL, ADSL, DSL, FCS, FDDI, Firewire, SCSI, Fiberchannel, FICON, ESCON, STS-1, OC-1, OC-3, OC-12, OC-48, OC-192, OC-768, ATM UNI, ATM NNI, WiFi, WiMAX, and ATM, and a second I/O port for communicating via a SPI-4 (System Packet Interface Level 4) interface; a protocol conversion block having a first I/O port and a second I/O port, said first I/O port for communicating via a SPI-4 interface and connected to said line interface card second I/O port, and said second I/O port for communicating via Gigabit Ethernet; and a processor having an I/O port for communicating via a Gigabit Ethernet protocol and connected to said protocol conversion block second I/O port.