A method and system are disclosed to enable an FLM designated as an owner, in a group of frames having redundant FLMs per frame, to ensure that an unresponsive “active” uplink is disabled, prior to allowing another uplink in the frame to become the active uplink. A group of frames, configured in a ring network topology, may only have a single uplink at a time. Otherwise, two or more concurrent active uplinks may cause a network loop that may result in total network failure (e.g., network crash). The disclosed method utilizes a coordination between an FLM owner on the ring and the neighbor FLM, in the same frame as the non-responsive FLM, to disable the active uplink, prior to transitioning to a new active uplink for the group of frames.