Mechanism and procedure for detecting switch mis-cabling

Abstract

A method, and a system for implementing the method, for implementing the method, for determining if a wire has been miswired in a network comprising service nodes and switch elements. The method includes the steps of: (1) transmitting a transmission stream in an outbound route, (where this transmission stream includes one or more service node fields for one or more service nodes, one or more switch element fields for one or more switch elements connected to the one or more service nodes, and a port field for each the switch element); (2) if the transmission stream is received on a port at a the switch element different than a the port field for the switch element indicated by the transmission stream, then setting an error indicator in the transmission stream; (3) transmitting the transmission stream back to the one or more service nodes in a return route, where the one or more service nodes determine from the error indicator a miswired condition between the receiving switch element and a previous switch element or service node along the outbound route. The one or more service nodes can record, store and tabulate the miswired condition and one or more additional miswired conditions. The transmission stream can store the one or more switch element fields for the one or more switch elements and the port fields for each the switch element separately for a path comprising the outbound route and a path comprising the return route.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.