Patent ID: 8504821

Claim:
A transceiver comprising: a transmitter optical subassembly including a fiber receptacle and an optical signal source; a receiver optical subassembly including a photodiode and a preamplifier circuit; an encryption and decryption key; an encryption block operably connected to the transmitter optical subassembly, the encryption block configured to perform an encryption operation on data received from a host device using the encryption and decryption key and to provide the resulting encrypted data to the transmitter optical assembly; and a decryption block operably connected to the receiver optical subassembly, decryption block including: a demultiplexer configured to receive serial data from the receiver optical subassembly and convert the serial data into parallel data, a decryption unit configured to receive the parallel data and perform a decryption operation using the encryption and decryption key, a decoder coupled between the demultiplexer and the decryption unit and configured to remove header data or alignment data from the parallel data such that the header data or alignment data is not decrypted, and a multiplexer configured to receive the decrypted parallel data and convert the decrypted parallel data into serial data.