Techniques are provided for detecting failure of switching elements of a distributed switch configured to forward Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) frames. Periodic discovery advertisement messages, which include a fabric name fieldm, are transmitted between a controlling Fiber Channel Forwarder (cFCF) and a FCoE data forwarder (FDF). The cFCF determines a FDF has failed out of the switch fabric based on a reserved value in the fabric name field of a received discovery advertisement message, such as a zero or null value, and de-instantiates virtual links with that FDF.