Methods and systems for reducing the signal path count between circuits within a SAS expander used for establishing SAS connections. The system comprises a SAS expander. The SAS expander comprises a plurality of link layer control circuits, each link layer control circuit adapted to communicatively couple with a SAS device. The SAS expander further comprises a connection manager communicatively coupled with the link layer control circuits for routing communications between the link layer control circuits. Each of the plurality of link layer control circuits is adapted to establish a SAS connection with another link layer control circuit through the connection manager by segmenting a plurality of interconnect signals into multiple data segments for sequential transmission to the connection manager, (e.g., without impacting the performance of the connection manager). The connection manager interprets the data segments to extract the plurality of interconnect signals to establish the SAS connection.