> In a sense, it’s a revolutionary way of how to network — it separates the “what” from the “how”. To be fair: that revolution already happened over 20 years ago
How quickly we have forgotten about AUI (Attachment Unit Interface)
If you're willing to be a little bit more flexible, the MAC-to-PHY distinction never really went away with the various MII generations: every speed from 10Mbps to 10Gbps is available using more-or-less the same interface.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XAUI
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media-independent_interface
AUI: So that's what that port next to the BNC connector on the 3COM 3C509B was for! We've come a long way.
I also enjoyed the writing style, and so went and read another article on the blog.
I tried to do something crazy. I had a 4-port XMC 10Gb NIC in the flight computer for a balloon experiment. Two ports of which were used for 10 Gigabit links to an FPGA for data acquisition. I wanted one port to be 100-BaseFX. Turns out that it was not possible to get a compatible SFP module (ok, it's sort of crazy to use a 10 Gb NIC for a 100Mb connection, but the copper RJ45 transceivers all work fine!).
You could also try resoldering new/thicker Twinax wires to old SFP connectors and update the EEPROM. My soldering skills apparently aren't that great. If yours are or you have plenty of old connectors you should give that a try.
