mb s is achieved by transmission at a data rate of 250 mb s over each wire pair the use of hybrids and cancellers enables full duplex transmission by allowing symbols to be transmitted and received on the same wire pairs at the same time baseband signaling with a modulation rate of 125 mbaud is utilized on each of the wire pairs the transmitted symbols are selected from a four dimensional five level symbol constellation the details of the interface of the phy 108 with the transmission media are not illustrated in the present disclosure but can be found in the ieee standards for this interface ieee std 802 3 ab 1999 in the illustration of fig1 there are illustrated four mac phy paths which allow for interfaces 102 to be connected together there is provided a switch block 114 for interfacing the macs 112 for each of the paths this switch block is basically the interconnect layer that allows information to be transmitted between ports or to be shared between all ports other embodiments may use a network interface card nic in conjunction with software on the system containing the nic to perform the higher level functions referring now to fig2 there is illustrated a detailed diagram of the phy 108 and mac 112 interface for a reduced pin count typically the ieee standard 802 3ab requires that data be transmitted on each rising clock edge by utilizing data transmission on the rising edge and the falling edge the pin count and the complexity can be reduced for data transfer between the phy 108 and the mac 112 in the illustrated embodiment the number of pins required to interconnect the mac 112 and the phy 108.