an optical transceiver is disclosed . the transceiver includes a receiver having adaptive electronic dispersion compensation circuitry on at least one optical channel . the adaptive electronic dispersion compensation circuitry provides diagnostics information to a host system . the transceiver can be an xfp , x2 , xenpak , sfp , sff , gbic or other type of transceiver . the diagnostics information can include information on the time variation of a quality of the optical channel and / or a measure of a worst state of the optical channel over a period of time . the diagnostics information can also be derived from a measure of a quality of an equalized receiver signal , a current tap weight value , and many other specific values .