The status/config of WR port (up/down) managed/interfaced by ifconfig or wrsw_hal concerns only Endpoints. This information is not synchronized with RTU. This means that RTU forwards frames to ports which are down, if such a port is enabled RTU config register. This essentially is not harmful if all works well. Two cases where it causes problem, currently:
1. autonegotiation fails - it happens sometimes with 1GbE devices. in such case, in the end, the frames are successfully received/sent/forwarded but port is seen by ifconfig as down
2. Frames are forwarded to all ports, even if not all ports are up - this means reading from swcore by all ports - it triggers "high-load" bugs, even if not all ports are connected

It seems that the status/config of an each Endpoint should be taken into account in the RTU forwarding decision (AND the status/config mask with final decision of RTU)