GBIC
A gigabit interface converter (GBIC) is a standard for transceivers, first defined in 1995 and commonly used with Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel for some time. By offering a standard, 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.[1]
A smaller variation of the GBIC called the small form-factor pluggable transceiver (SFP), also known as mini-GBIC, has the same functionality but in a smaller form factor.[2] Announced in 2001, it largely made the GBIC obsolete.