Method and system for implementing a fast recovery process in a local area network

Abstract

The present invention concerns a method and a system for accelerating fault recovery in a redundant, tree structured local area network. The invention is used to define some of the LAN ports, which are, for example, used to connect the switch (SW) into the IP router, as critical ones. Likewise, some other LAN ports, used to connect the IP hosts to said switch (SW), are defined as dependent of the critical links. If a critical LAN port or corresponding link is found to be non-functional, e.g. no carrier sensed, all LAN ports or corresponding links depending on it are declared as non-functional. The declaration is done at link level in a way which allows the device(s) or ports connected to the other end of the link to notice that the link is not in use anymore to carry traffic.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.