Patent ID: 8243752

Claim:
A physical-layer device comprising: a cable measurement module configured to measure characteristics of a cable; a data rate module configured to (i) select a data rate divisor N based on the measured characteristics of the cable, and (ii) reduce a rate of a first clock based on the data rate divisor N, where N is at least one of a positive integer greater than 1 or a real number greater than 1; and a physical-layer device core comprising a transmit module configured to transmit first signals over the cable at a data rate of M/N Gbps based on the rate of the first clock, where M is a positive integer, and a receive module configured to receive second signals over the cable at the data rate of M/N Gbps based on the rate of the first clock, wherein the first signals and the second signals conform to 1000BASE-T when M=1, and wherein the first signals and the second signals conform to 10 GBASE-T when M=10.