Expandable integrated circuit multiport repeater controller with multiple media independent interfaces and mixed media connections

An integrated circuit repeater, comprising:

• a plurality of media dependent interfaces for connection to respective 100BASE-T compliant communication media;
• interface control logic, including interface control and status registers for the plurality of media dependent interfaces, which manages physical layer receive and transmit functions on the plurality of media dependent interfaces for variant types of communication media;
• repeater circuitry coupled to the plurality of media dependent interfaces which perform physical layer repeater functions for the plurality of media dependent interfaces;
• a media independent interface, emulating a connection to a transceiver, coupled with the repeater circuitry, for connection of the plurality of media dependent interfaces with a corresponding 100BASE-T compliant data link layer media access controller;
• and
• a management interface, coupled with the interface control logic, responsive to a repeater address received at the management interface, to provide read and write access to the interface control and status registers for the plurality of media dependent interfaces.

An integrated circuit repeater, comprising:

• a plurality of media dependent interfaces for connection to respective 100BASE-T compliant communication media;
• interface control logic, including a media type register which specifies one of a prespecified set of types of 100BASE-T compliant communication media for each of the plurality of media dependent interfaces, which manages physical layer receive and transmit functions on the plurality of media dependent interfaces for specified types of communication media;
• repeater circuitry coupled to the plurality of media dependent interfaces which perform physical layer repeater functions for the plurality of media dependent interfaces;
• and
• a management interface, coupled with the interface control logic, to provide access to the media type register for specifying the variant types of communication media for the plurality of media dependent interfaces.

An integrated circuit repeater comprising:

• a plurality of media dependent interfaces for connection to respective communication media;
• repeater circuitry, coupled to the plurality of media dependent interfaces, which performs physical layer repeater functions for the plurality of media dependent interfaces, including the detection of receive errors, and detection of collisions;
• and
• an expansion port coupled with the repeater circuitry, which provides a physical layer interface to another integrated circuit repeater, including logic for communicating the detection of collisions and the detection of receive errors to the other integrated circuit repeater;
• and
• wherein the expansion port operates at a clock rate faster than the clock rate of the media dependent interfaces for receiving or transmitting data.