Signaling link or node failure in a direct interconnect network may be facilitated by recording paths between the various nodes in the network in a lookup table. whereby the paths are represented by a sequence of exit port numbers for nodes along with a terminator marker indicating the end of the path and thus the destination node. Each path in the lookup table may also be associated with a status indicator. As packets are broken down into flits and sent over the network. failures in links or nodes may be detected. Once a failure is detected, a path failure flit is sent back through the path in reverse with path information to notify the source node of the failure. Once notified of a link or node failure. the associated path is updated to reflect its unavailability.