Patent ID: 7568026

Claim:
A method for efficient link recovery between first and second Fibre Channel ports communicating by the transport of GFP-encapsulated Fibre Channel client data frames across a SONET/SDH transport network, said first Fibre Channel port connected to said SONET/SDH transport network through a first transport interface and said second Fibre Channel port connected to said SONET/SDH transport network through a second transport interface, the method comprising: polling a GFP synchronization status from said first transport interface to determine whether a GFP loss of synchronization has occurred at said first transport interface, wherein a GFP loss of synchronization signifies an interruption in said SONET/SDH transport network; transmitting a stream of Ordered Sets from said first transport interface to said first Fibre Channel port in response to detecting a GFP loss of synchronization, the stream of Ordered Sets indicating to said first Fibre Channel port an interruption in said SONET/SDH transport network between said first and second transport interfaces; and performing link initialization and buffer credit recovery procedures in the first Fibre Channel port in response to receiving the stream of Ordered Sets from the first transport interface to recover the link with said second Fibre Channel port.