Patent ID: 8520534

Claim:
A method of testing at least one transport link in a communications system, the method comprising: generating, by a first communications device comprising a first aggregation circuit, a testing frame including a destination address for a second communications device comprising a second aggregation circuit; sending, by the first communications device, the testing frame to the destination address; receiving, by a port in the second communications device, an incoming frame originating from the first communications device; determining, by the second communications device, that the incoming frame comprises the testing frame; producing, by the second communications device, a response frame based on the testing frame; placing the response frame in a selected priority-based service queue of a plurality of priority-based service queues of the second communications device based on a configurable priority level of the testing frame; and sending, from the selected priority-based service queue of the second communications device, the response frame to the first communications device.