Patent ID: 7483398

Claim:
A method for automatically detecting bi-directional line switched ring link provisioning errors in a bi-directional line switched ring, the method comprising: receiving from each neighbor node, an opaque link state advertisement containing a bi-directional line switched ring ID and link information of the neighbor node sending the advertisement at a local node of the ring, each of the neighbor nodes and the local node having said bi-directional line switched ring ID assigned thereto and associated with a bi-directional line switched ring; checking the ring IDs of each of the neighbor nodes to determine if each of said ring IDs of the neighbor nodes match said bi-directional line switched ring ID assigned to the local node; and raising a ring ID mismatch alarm if the ring IDs of the local node and neighbor nodes do not match to identify a bi-directional line switched ring link provisioning error in said bi-directional line switched ring.