Patent ID: 7496797

Claim:
A method comprising: sending a packet from an endpoint in an advanced switching fabric and starting a timer to run until receiving a response packet or receiving an event packet notifying of a device failure; saving a copy of the sent packet; detecting if the timer has expired, retransmitting the packet after the timer has expired and resetting the timer; and running a faulty device detection algorithm if the packet has been retransmitted a predetermined number of times, wherein running the faulty device detection algorithm comprises: sending a request to each device in a path in the advanced switching fabric; receiving a response from operational devices in the path; detecting a fault in the path if a device in the path does not respond; and sending a message to the last operational device in the path and the first non-operational device in the path, wherein a hardware failure of the first non-operational device is detected if a response to the message is received and wherein a software failure of the last operational device in the path is detected if no response to the message is received.