Patent ID: 8667116

Claim:
A method of supervising a network node element of a network, comprising: supervising, by a first hardware device, the network node element by polling for a status of, and listening for an acknowledgement from, the network node element, wherein the acknowledgement includes either an error message or an OK status, depending on whether an error occurred within the network node element; and for partial supervision of the network node element: listening, by a second hardware device, for the acknowledgement from the network node element; determining, in a first determining step and by the second hardware device, whether the acknowledgement includes the error message; and determining, in a second determining step and by the second hardware device, whether to take a responsive action in response to the acknowledgement based on the determining of whether the acknowledgement includes the error message; wherein: no responsive action is taken in response to the acknowledgement if the determination in the first determining step is that the acknowledgement includes the OK status, and responsive action is taken in response to the acknowledgement if the determination in the first determining step is that the acknowledgement includes the error message; the second hardware device is not configured to poll for the status of the network node element; and the responsive action includes forwarding the error message to a higher level node in the network in response to determining, at the second hardware device, that the first hardware device failed to forward the error message to the higher level node.