Patent ID: 8917610

Claim:
An apparatus for detecting intermittent network link failures, the apparatus comprising: a non-tangible computer readable storage medium storing a computer readable program; a processor executing the computer readable program, the computer readable program comprising: a detection module detecting link failures of a network link of a network by notifying an Ethernet data link layer of each link failure from an Ethernet physical layer, the Ethernet data link layer notifying a network agent residing at the data link layer of the link failure, and the network agent logging the link failure; a tracking module tracking the link failures over a specified time interval, wherein a link failure comprises missing a heartbeat message during a heartbeat time interval; a failure module determining the network link is failing in response to a number of link failures during the specified time interval exceeding a specified failure threshold, wherein the specified failure threshold t is calculated from a service level as t=ksn wherein k is a non-zero constant, s is the service level, and n is a number of heartbeat messages during the specified time interval; and a mitigation module mitigating communications over the network link by removing the failing network link from the network.