The RIC has an on-chip phase-locked-loop (PLL) for Manchester data decoding, a Manchester encoder, and an Elasticity Buffer for preamble regeneration. Each RIC can connect to 13 cable segments via its network interface ports. One port is fully AUI compatible and is able to connect to an external MAU using the maximum lenght of AUI cable. The other 12 ports have integrated 10BASE-T transceivers. These transceiver functions may be bypassed so that the RIC may be used with external transceivers. In addition, large repeater units, containing several hundred ports may be constructed by cascading RICs together over an Inter-RIC bus. The RIC is configurable for specific applications. It provides port status information for LED array displays and a simple interface for system processors. The RIC posseses multi-function counter and status flag arrays to facilitate network statistics gathering. A serial interface, known as the Management Interface is available for the collection of data in Managed Hub applications.