Quick note on Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS) error in Optical System

What is PCS ?

The Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS) is a networking protocol sublayer in the  Ethernet standards. This layer resides at the top of the physical layer (PHY) which provides an interface between the Physical Medium Attachment (PMA) sublayer and the media-independent interface (MII). This layer is responsible for coding and decoding data streams flowing to and from the MAC layer , scrambling and descrambling it, block and symbol redistribution, alignment marker insertion and removal, and lane block synchronisation .Currently most of the optical client ports supports PCS lane to enable high data rate .

Where actually PCS layer lies ?

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How to troubleshoot PCS errors issues in Optical Network links?

If you see PCS errors on the interfaces; it may cause the link to flap or you can see errors on the client interfaces of the optical or router ports. PCS block reports signal fail/signal degrade too based on pre-set thresholds.

• Sometime you may see bit errors or error block in the performance of the interface.Bit errors can also be converted to PCS errors.PCS errors are generally due to physical component degrade or failure  issues like problem in  physical interface mapper, damaged or attenuated fiber, issue on patch panel,ODF or due to faulty or damaged optic pluggables.  The higher rate we go the complexity of the internal mapper/components increases so performance becomes more sensitive to optical path perturberation .
• PCS errors are also visible on the interfaces if there is some activity involving manual fiber pull ,device reboots ,optics replacement etc.  During link bring-up or bring down or flapping kind of situation, it is expected to see PCS errors increase for a short interval of time; which  is because of the  initial synchronization or skew-deskew process  of the two Ethernet end points. PCS errors are always counted from the incoming direction on the receiving node.
• The other reasons to see PCS errors could be damaged or bad fiber, faulty optical pluggable (sfp/xfp/cfp etc).
• Low receive power on the interface can also result in this kind of error so it is always recommended to troubleshoot or investigate on physical fiber as well as physical port on the devices(router/optical client ports).