Patent ID: 7787765

Claim:
In a fiber optic communications system in which a pair of nodes interconnect a pair of end devices, said nodes being coupled to said end devices via respective device link segments and being coupled to each other via a network link segment, said device link segments and said network link segment together forming an end-to-end link, a method for initializing said end-to-end link, said method being performed by one of said nodes and comprising the steps of: initializing the device link segment with the end device to which said one of said nodes is coupled, the initializing comprising successfully completing an open fiber control (OFC) protocol handshake between the node and the end device; upon initializing the device link segment, sending a time division multiplexed signal to the other node over the network link segment indicating that the sending node has initialized its device link segment, the time division multiplexed signal sent to the other node comprising a time division multiplexed data signal and a time division multiplexed control signal indicating an OFC protocol handshake completion between the sending node and the end device; and completing initialization of said end-to-end link upon receiving a time division multiplexed signal from the other node over the network link segment indicating that the other node has initialized its device link segment, wherein said time division multiplexed signal from the other node comprises a time division multiplexed data signal and a time division multiplexed control signal indicating an OFC protocol handshake completion between the other node and its device link segment.