| CPC H04L 12/2801 (2013.01) | 27 Claims |

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1. An Advanced Physical Layer (APL) adapter for enabling functional interconnection of a 2-wire APL spur to at least one industrial process legacy field device, the adapter comprising:
a first pair of terminals configured for connection to the 2-wire APL spur;
APL physical layer (PHY) circuitry capacitively coupled to the first pair of terminals;
a second pair of terminals;
connectivity circuitry configured to communicate with a legacy field device connected to the second pair of terminals in accordance with a legacy communication protocol and control the APL PHY circuitry to communicate through the first pair of terminals in accordance with an Ethernet protocol; and
wherein the connectivity circuitry is configured to receive, translate and/or forward writes and configuration changes to a connected legacy field device and communicate acknowledgements from the connected legacy field device to an external device via the APL PHY circuitry.
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