Gigabit interface converter

By standardizing on a hot swappable electrical interface, a single gigabit port can support a wide range of physical media, from copper to long-wave single-mode optical fiber, at lengths of hundreds of kilometers.

Flexibility is the benefit of hot-swappable transceivers like the GBIC standard as opposed to fixed physical interface configurations.

Where optical technologies are mixed, an administrator can just-in-time purchase GBICs of the specific type for each link.

The GBIC standard is openly defined by the Small Form Factor Committee in document number 8053i.

The original contributors were AMP Incorporated, Compaq Computers, Sun Microsystems, and Vixel Corporation.