An environment that facilitates the purchasing and updating of specific operational features in an optical transceiver (or optical transmitter or optical receiver). The environment includes a host computing system (hereinafter referred to as the “host”), a network, a remote computing site, and an optical transceiver having a system memory and at least one processor. The host determines that microcode that governs the behavior of an optical transceiver is desired to be purchased. A request to purchase the microcode is sent over the network from the host to the remote computing site. The remote computing site responds to this request by providing the host information by which the purchased microcode may be accessed. The host may then access the microcode. Finally, the host provides the microcode to the optical transceiver memory where it may later be executed by the processor.