Patent ID: 7944841

Claim:
An apparatus for transmitting error information between an Ethernet network and a synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) network in an Ethernet over SDH (EoS) network which transmits Ethernet frame by using the SDH network, the apparatus being provided between the Ethernet network and the SDH network, the apparatus comprising: a frame transmission/reception unit for transmitting/receiving an Ethernet frame through a plurality of optical transmission reception ports and detecting an error of a physical link; a media access control (MAC) processing unit for detecting an operations, administration, and maintenance (OAM) frame and state information of each port by deciphering header information of the Ethernet frame input from the frame transmission/reception unit, generating the OAM frame based on the state and error information of each port or each flow, and transmitting the OAM frame to the Ethernet network through the frame transmission/reception unit, wherein the OAM frame conforms to the format of an MAC control frame and includes the state and error information in an MAC control parameter region of the MAC control frame; wherein the OAM frame is generated by inserting OAM information corresponding to the error into an OAM type region of the MAC control parameter region and inserting information and values corresponding to the error into an OAM data region of the MAC control parameter region; a SDH processing unit for receiving state and error information of the Ethernet network and generating a corresponding SDH OAM frame, wherein the SDH OAM frame conforms to the format of a standard SDH OAM frame and includes the OAM frame havin˜ the state and error information in a payload; an output interface unit for receiving the SDH OAM frame and SDH frame generated by and transmitted from the SDH processing unit and outputting the SDH OAM frame and SDH frame to the SDH network; and a signal processing unit for receiving information on the state and error detected and error information of the Ethernet network to the SDH processing unit, the state and error information used to generate information for generating the SDH QAM frame.