MIPs do not initialize any CFM messages. MIPs passively receive CFM messages, process the messages received and respond back to the originating MEP. By responding to received CFM messages, MIPs can support discovery of hop-by-hop path among MEPs, allow connection failures to be isolated to smaller segments of the network to help discover location of faults along the paths. MIPs can be created independent of MEPs. MIP functionality can be summarized as:
Respond to Loopback (ping) messages at the same level as itself and addressed to it.
Respond to Linktrace (traceroute) messages.
Forward Linktrace messages after decrementing the TTL.