Abstract: A method and system for emulating an Fibre Channel link over a SONET transport path to provide link integrity is disclosed. Techniques to handle link failures from a Fibre Channel element to its associated Fibre Channel port, or of the SONET/SDH network linking Fibre Channel ports are described. Timing the length of failures and return of operation of the failed links is used to handle transient conditions and to avoid link bouncing.

Abstract: A method and system for flow control of GFP-encapsulated client data frames over SONET/SDH transport networks is described. Transport interfaces, in the form of port cards, have FIFO buffers for receiving the GFP frames. In acknowledgment of the received frames, a transmitting transport interface receives an acknowledgement in form of a returned frame sequence number tag along with the available capacity in bytes of the buffer of the receiving transport interface. With a continuous update of buffer capacity and tracking the number of bytes in transit to the receiving transport interface, the transmitting transport interface maximizes the utilization of the channel through the SONET/SDH transport network, even with dropped frames or dropped acknowledgment tags.