Patent ID: 8374164

Claim:
A non-transitory tangible media for encoding logic for execution and, when executed, operable to perform operations of: discovering a plurality of paths between an ingress node and an egress node; constructing, by a processor, a plurality of path descriptors, wherein each path descriptor corresponds to one of the plurality of paths, and wherein each path descriptor includes a plurality of node descriptors and each node descriptor includes a downstream internet protocol (“IP”) address; associating, by the processor, each path descriptor of the plurality of path descriptors with a Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (“BFD”) discriminator that is locally-unique to the ingress node; and for each of the plurality of paths, bootstrapping a BFD session with the egress node, wherein the bootstrapping of the BFD session includes providing the egress node with the path descriptor and the associated BFD discriminator; detecting a failure in the BFD session; and sending an alarm in response to the failure of the BFD session, wherein the alarm includes the path descriptor and the associated BFD discriminator of the BFD session of the failure.