PRBS link troubleshooting
When a link fails, traditional troubleshooting employs the host ASICs to generate and check a PRBS (pseudo random binary sequence) stream to troubleshoot the entire link but lacks granularity to isolate where the fault is occurring.
Millions of bits are generated in a pre-determined sequence which the checker uses to determine the bit error rate. But the traditional approach cannot isolate where along the link the fault/bit errors are occurring.
Intelligent link troubleshooting
By adding additional PRBS measurements points from the DSPs in the optical modules, fine-grained link troubleshooting is enabled.
Measurement points from the module DSP generators and checkers are correlated with statistics from the host ASIC to isolate bit errors across the link. Software intelligence correlates the BER parameters across the measurement points to isolate faults across the electrical or optical links.