Patent ID: 8824280

Claim:
A method of supporting link status propagation in a network configuration comprising a media converter system interconnecting an internet protocol (IP) based host system with an IP based transport network, where the IP based host system is connected to the media converter system via a first pair of link paths and the IP based transport network is connected to the media converter system via a second pair of link paths, the method comprising: monitoring respective link statuses of the first and the second pair of link paths in order to register link status changes, wherein the monitoring comprises monitoring a set of one or more transmitter link status registers of a physical layer device (PHY) of said media converter system; and automatically propagating a link status change at one of said first or second pair of link paths across the media converter system to the other of said first or second pair of link paths by enabling a corresponding transmitter of the media converter system when it is disabled and disabling the corresponding transmitter of the media converter system when it is enabled, wherein said automatically propagating the link status change occurs responsive to recognizing, when monitoring the respective link statuses, a link status change to or from a loss of link (LOL) status of one of said first or second pair of link paths.