Patent ID: 7020814

Claim:
A method for emulating a Fibre Channel link over a SONET/SDH transport path and providing link integrity, the method comprising: transporting Fibre Channel data from a local Fibre Channel port through an associated local Fibre Channel transport interface over the SONET/SDH transport path through a remote Fibre Channel transport interface to an associated remote Fibre Channel port; detecting a failure of a Fibre Channel link from the local Fibre Channel port to the associated local Fibre Channel transport interface; timing the failure of the Fibre Channel link from the Fibre Channel port to its associated local Fibre Channel transport interface to determine that the failure is nontransient; generating error condition codes; and transmitting the error condition codes over the SONET/SDH transport path overhead to the remote Fibre Channel transport interface so that the Fibre Channel link from the remote Fibre Channel transport interface to the associated remote Fibre Channel port is disabled after a predetermined amount of time.