Patent ID: 7489642

Claim:
In a switched communication network that enables establishing a datapath over a switching node of said network, an apparatus for silent datapath failure detection at said node comprising: at an ingress of said node associated with said datapath, an ingress statistics unit for collecting an ingress protocol data unit (PDU) count over a time interval; at an egress of said node associated with said datapath, an egress statistics unit for collecting an egress PDU count over said time interval; means for comparing said ingress PDU count and said egress PDU count and generating an error signal in case of a mismatch between said ingress PDU count and said egress PDU count; means for alarming said mismatch and specifying a type of datapath failure associated with said error signal; and a decision unit for comprising said egress PDU count with a threshold, and whenever said egress PDU count violates said threshold, identifying said ingress, PDU count corresponding to said ingress triggering said means for comparing, and using an additional threshold for distinguishing linecard resets from a datapath failure.