Signal quality indicator

A method of deriving an indicator of the signal quality in an in-service Ethernet network, said network at least having an error detection function to detect errors in packets, and a counting function to determine an overall amount of network traffic received, the method comprising:

• obtaining, from the Ethernet network, a first value representing a number of packets received having errors therein using an etherStatsCRCAlignErrors standard counter;
• obtaining, from the Ethernet network, a second value representing an overall amount of network traffic received using an etherStatsOctets standard counter;
• and
• calculating an indicator of signal quality, for the Ethernet network, based on a ratio of the number of packets received having errors therein to the overall amount of network traffic received by:
• calculating an estimated Bit Error Rate (eBER) over a measurement interval of a predetermined number of sampled packets using
• eBER
• =
• etherStatsCRCAlignErrors
• etherStatsOctets
• ×
• 8
• ;
• and
• adjusting the measurement interval to compensate for a signal rate, and a traffic profile across the in-service Ethernet network.