Patent ID: 8644136

Claim:
A method of facilitating processing within a network, said method comprising: detecting by a first network component of the network that a malfunction associated with the first network component has occurred, the first network component being coupled to a link that is non-operational due to the malfunction and is designed for automatic link recovery, the network being based on an architecture having an explicit architectural specification defining the architecture, the architectural specification specifying that automatic link recovery is to be performed in response to the malfunction, the automatic link recovery designed to delay a predetermined amount of time prior to confirming there is a malfunction; and reporting the malfunction to a second network component, the reporting to alert of the malfunction and to indicate that recovery is to be attempted, and wherein the reporting comprises: asserting by the first network component a sideband error signal to report the malfunction, the sideband error signal being coupled to the output of the first network component and an input of the second network component and the sideband error signal being non-architected in that it is not a part of the architectural specification, the asserting comprising setting an indicator in a position of a status register of the second network component to a defined value, the position corresponding to the sideband error signal for the first network component, and wherein the reporting bypasses the automatic link recovery which is an architected feature specified in the architectural specification, and wherein the reporting is performed absent waiting the predetermined amount of time for the automatic link recovery to confirm the malfunction.