A loopback mechanism uses frame relay OAM loopback frames which eliminate the need for location identifiers and reduces overhead and complexity. The frames replace source and destination loopback location identifiers by a loopback indicator field, a send node count field and a return node count field. The originating node of the loopback procedure sets the number of intermediate frame relay nodes to be traversed. The intermediate frame relay nodes simply increment or decrement the node count, depending on the direction of the loopback frame.