A system and method can support subnet management in a network environment, such as an engineered system for middleware and application execution or a middleware machine environment. A subnet manager (SM) can retrieve information for setting up a reliable connection (RC) between a subnet administrator (SA) and a client node in a subnet. Furthermore, the system can set up one or more connection states for a port associated with the SM node to establish the RC connection between the port associated with the SM node and a port associated with said client node. Then, the SM can activate the port associated with said client node.