Multi-service PHY box

A data communication system, comprising

• multiple Media Access Control (MAC) units;
• multiple physical layer (PHY) interface units, at least some of the PHY units having different physical media types from one another;
• logic to communicate between the MAC units and the PHY units using tunneling protocol over Internet Protocol (IP)
• logic to enable a MAC unit of the multiple MAC units and a corresponding PHY unit of the multiple PHY units to agree on an Attribute Value Pair (AVP) interpretation that is unique to the MAC unit and corresponding PHY unit;
• and
• logic for each PHY unit to assign a session ID to each corresponding MAC unit, the session ID used to identify the type of PHY, to route packets to a particular PHY, and to interpret application payloads.