A heterojunction bipolar transistor is provided that has a reduced turn-on voltage threshold. The request may comprise application data. The invention further extends to recombinant nucleic acid molecules that can be used in this method, as well as further uses of the methods and nucleic acid molecules of the invention. To facilitate the communication of the remote processor with the multiport switch, the host processor executes a TCPIP stack and the multiport switch is assigned a unique IP address.