Patent ID: 6842803

Claim:
A communications system, comprising: physical layer hardware adapted to communicate data over a communications channel in accordance with a plurality of control codes, the physical layer hardware being adapted to demodulate an incoming analog signal to generate a digital receive signal and modulate a digital transmit signal to generate an analog transmit signal; a processing unit adapted to execute a privileged driver for interfacing with the physical layer hardware, the privileged driver including program instructions for implementing a protocol layer to decode the digital receive signal, encode the digital transmit signal, and configure the physical layer hardware for receipt of the digital receive signal and transmission of the digital transmit signal based on the plurality of control codes; and a memory adapted to store a privileged code, the privileged code when executed by the processing unit being adapted to determine if a calling program has authority to execute a privileged instruction for configuring the physical layer hardware, and the processing unit being adapted to execute the privileged instruction in response to determining the calling program has the authority to execute the privileged instruction.