Patent ID: 7257086

Claim:
A method for effectuating routing of customer traffic from a first node to a second node on a network, wherein the customer traffic may be routed from the first to the second node along at least two transfer paths including a transfer path comprising a primary channel link, the method comprising: (a) enabling customer traffic to be transferred over the primary channel link while monitoring a transmission quality of the primary channel link to determine if the link enters a marginal operating state, and in response thereto, (b) disabling the primary channel link such that the network immediately determines that it is unavailable for transmitting customer traffic; and (c) sending test traffic over the primary channel link while monitoring the transmission quality to determine if the primary channel link returns to a non-marginal operating state, and in response thereto, (d) re-enabling the primary channel link such that the network immediately determines that it is available for transmission of customer traffic; and (e) repeating operations (a)-(d) on a continuous basis; wherein a change in the transmission quality between marginal and non-marginal operating states comprises a changeover condition and disabling and re-enabling the primary channel link comprise respective changeover events, further comprising implementing a configurable delay between a changeover condition and when an associated changeover event may occur; and wherein a state machine algorithm is used to determine when to disable and re enable the primary channel link.