Patent ID: 7149397

Claim:
A Small Form Factor (SFP) module comprising: a physical layer module having a host-side configurable to communicate with a host using the 1000Base-X protocol or the Serial Gigabit Media Independent Interface (SGMII) protocol and a media dependent interface (MDI) side that communicates utilizing the triple-speed 1000Base-T protocol, that translates between the 1000Base-X and 1000Base-T protocols, and that performs 1000Base-X auto-negotiation to determine a link transmission speed of either 1000, 100, or 10 Mbps; a storage device holding SFP ID information; and a management interface, coupled to the storage device and physical layer module, used by a host to read the ID information and, based on the ID information, configure the physical layer module to communicate with the host using either the 1000Base-X protocol or the SGMII protocol.