Patent ID: 8854975

Claim:
A method of performing end-to-end Operation Administration and Maintenance (OAM) sessions on connections in a packet-based network, in which a first of the connections is routed on a first path between a first pair of endpoint nodes of the network and a second of the connections is routed on a second path between a second pair of endpoint nodes of the network, the first and second paths having a shared path portion, the method comprising: establishing a first OAM session between the first pair of endpoint nodes; establishing a second OAM session between the second pair of endpoint nodes; establishing a third OAM session as a shared OAM session between an intermediate node on the shared path portion and another node on the shared path portion; and providing, by the intermediate node, fault notification information from the shared OAM session to the first and second OAM sessions when the shared OAM session indicates that a fault has occurred, wherein: the first OAM session exchanges messages between the endpoints of the first connection at a first rate; the second OAM session exchanges messages between the endpoints of the second connection at a second rate; and the shared OAM session exchanges messages between the intermediate node and the other node at a third rate which is faster than the first and second rates.