Certain features relate to improving the link-fault tolerance in a distributed antenna system (DAS) by utilizing a series of synchronous Ethernet frames. A receiving remote unit or a head-end unit in the DAS can predict the start of incoming Ethernet frames based on frame information extracted from previously received Ethernet frames. For example, a remote unit can be configured to receive one or more Ethernet frames, each of the one or more Ethernet frames including a start-of-frame field. After a period of time corresponding to the frame repetition rate, the remote unit can search for an additional start-of-frame field, indicating the receipt of the next Ethernet frame. The remote unit can extract the payload data from the next Ethernet frame based on the predicted value for the additional start-of-frame field.