Multi-service PHY box

1. 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.

2. The system of claim 1 , where the tunneling protocol used is Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol Version 3 (L2TPv3).

3. The system of claim 1 , where the logic to communicate between the MAC units and the PHY units using a tunneling protocol over IP further comprises:

logic to establish a PHY-specific control channel between each MAC unit and each corresponding PHY unit.