Patent ID: 8422363
Filing Date: 2013-04-16
Classification: H04J

Abstract:
1. A method for realizing a service protection, the method comprising: determining one or more idle automatic protection switching (APS)/protection communication channel (PCC) paths that are available to all nodes in a service protection trail, wherein the one or more idle APS/PCC paths are determined based on contents of multiframe alignment signal (MFAS) and APS/PCC overhead bytes of received respective multiframes in an optical channel data unit k (ODUk) frame structure, wherein each of the received respective multiframes in the ODUk frame structure includes an overhead field of MFAS and an overhead field of APS/PCC containing corresponding MFAS and APS/PCC overhead bytes, wherein each idle APS/PCC path is associated with one of several values indicated by at least a portion of contents in the overhead field of MFAS and is allowed to be dynamically assigned to any service monitoring mode and any kind of service protection; selecting any APS/PCC path for a certain kind of service protection from the determined one or more idle APS/PCC paths; and using the selected path for implementing service protection.