Reducing the risk of network outages is vital for critical business applications such as IP surveillance that requires 24/7 non-stop operation. Longer periods of downtime not only affects the system operation but also jeopardizes people’s safety. Therefore, to minimize such impact, LFP is necessary to constantly monitor network connectivity along with data loss prevention. This article explains how LFP works with Ethernet media converters.
LFP stands for Link Fault Pass Through, which is a built-in monitoring feature in media converters that allows to constantly detect loss of signal for copper links.
Figure1. Example of Cable Breakage
Take Figure 1 for example. Without enabling LFP, both managed switch and media converter on the left side have no idea about the breakage of the copper link(Link A). Hence, Link C and Link B still continue operating despite the fact that no datacan be delivered from IP Cam.
Figure2. Example of LFP Operation
LFP is able to force a media converter to shut down its fiber link in the event of a copper link breakage. Take figure 2 for example. Once LFP is enabled on both media converters, they will shut down their respective links, i.e., Link B and Link C, accordingly if Link A breaks. If SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) traps for link down monitoring is configured on the managed switch, an alert message will be sent out immediately from the managed switch to the NMS (Network Management System) in order to notify network engineers about any link down events.
As network connectivity becomes so important for business, the impact of network downtime cannot be underestimated. LFP assists network engineers to quickly locate cable breakage to reduce the impact of network outages to a minimum.