Patent ID: 8619595

Claim:
A method comprising: generating at an ingress routing bridge in a TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) network, a trace message for a specified flow along a path from the ingress routing bridge to a destination reachable through the TRILL network; transmitting the trace message from the ingress routing bridge to a next-hop routing bridge in the TRILL network; receiving at the ingress routing bridge, a plurality of reply messages from routing bridges in response to transmitting said trace message; and chaining said plurality of reply messages together to formulate said path and identify the routing bridges in said path and a location of any fault in said path; wherein each of said plurality of reply messages comprises a TRILL header, identification of an ingress port and egress port at a routing bridge transmitting the reply message, a next-hop routing bridge identifier, and a hop count contained in an Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) field, the reply message transmitted based on a lookup in a forwarding information base at the routing bridge.