Patent attributes
A mechanism is provided for debugging of system-wide packet loss issues in network devices by automatically identifying packet loss conditions at runtime of the network device and by logging and analyzing relevant data to help diagnose the issues resulting in lost packets. A network programmer defines a path through the communications processor that identified packets should follow, and then hardware mechanisms within the modules of the communications processor are used to determine whether the packets are indeed following the defined path. If not, then the hardware mechanisms halt processing and logging being performed by all or part of the communications processor and provide logged information and packet information to an analysis tool for display. In this manner, debugging information can be provided in real time, along with a history of the packet's progress through the communication processor stages.
