Patent ID: 8792509

Claim:
A method for in-band protection switch signaling in a communication system, the communication system arranged as a point-to-multipoint tree, the point-to-multipoint tree including a root node communicatively coupled to a plurality of leaf nodes through both a working link and a protection link, the communication system including an element management system managing at least one node of the point-to-multipoint tree, the method comprising: receiving a management system request from the element management system; evaluating the management system request to determine whether the communication system is allowed to implement the management system request; responsive to determining that the communication system is allowed to implement the management system request, notifying each node in the point-to-multipoint tree of the management request; executing the management system request; notifying each node in the tree of the management request by using the root node as a proxy for a managed leaf node to notify all other leaf nodes in the tree; wherein the management request is a continuity check message including an automatic protection switching type-length-value (“TLV”); wherein the automatic protection switching TLV includes: at least one protection group identifier identifying a subset of the leaf nodes according to service; and at least one request value representing one command of a set of management commands, each request value corresponding to one of the protection group identifiers; and wherein the request value has a 4-bit length, the protection group identifier is determined by a position of the 4-bit request value within the automatic protection switching TLV.