Patent ID: 7630402

Claim:
A media-access control (MAC) unit that processes the flow of data between a higher protocol-layer unit and a physical-layer control unit of a network communications component, the physical-layer control unit interfacing with a communications medium and having an input port to receive data in the form of FEC blocks to be transmitted to the communications medium and an output port to provide data in the form of FEC blocks that has been received from the communications medium, the media-access control unit comprising: a first processor that receives high-level data units from the higher protocol-layer unit and generates outgoing MAC protocol-data units therefrom, the first processor assigning connection identifiers to each outgoing MAC protocol-data unit, the first processor having an instruction execution unit, an instruction memory, and a data memory; a second processor that receives outgoing MAC protocol-data units generated by the first processor and generates outgoing FEC blocks therefrom for outputting to the input port of the physical-layer control unit, the second processor having an instruction execution unit, an instruction memory, a data memory, an output port to provide outgoing FEC blocks to the physical-layer control unit, and an input port to receive incoming FEC blocks from the physical-layer control unit, wherein the second processor is adapted to generate incoming MAC protocol-data units from incoming FEC blocks received at its input port; and a MAC-PDU reception buffer accessible by the first and second processors, the second processor storing incoming MAC protocol-data units in the MAC-PDU reception buffer, and the first processor reading incoming MAC protocol-data units from the MAC-PDU reception buffer.