Patent ID: 8826447

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a backplane connector, the backplane connector configured to provide an interface between the apparatus and a first device separate from the apparatus; and a connector configured to provide an interface between the apparatus and a second device separate from the apparatus, wherein the connector comprises, inside the connector: i) a jack, wherein the jack comprises a) a plurality of electrical terminals, and b) a magnetic component electrically coupled to the plurality of electrical terminals; and ii) a physical layer device, wherein the physical layer device comprises a) a physical layer module, wherein the physical layer module comprises an interface configured to receive packets from the jack, and an interface bus configured to inspect the packets, wherein the inspecting includes performing deep packet inspection of the packets, and b) a network interface configured to, based on the inspection of the packets by the interface bus, provide the packets to the first device separate from the physical layer device via the backplane connector, wherein the connector is directly connected to the backplane connector via a communications cable.