Patent ID: 7706254

Claim:
A method for providing protection of a local area network (LAN) connection, comprising: providing first and second LAN cards in a multi-service platform, the first and second LAN cards each comprising at least one port, wherein the first and second LAN cards are coupled to a network edge device through their respective ports to communicate LAN traffic to and from a LAN; providing a switch fabric in the multi-service platform, the switch fabric coupled to the first LAN card and the second LAN card, and coupled to a wide area network (WAN); providing a path selector in the switch fabric operable to select between a first input and a second input of the path selector, the first input of the path selector coupled to the first LAN card, the second input of the path selector coupled to the second LAN card; designating the first LAN card as an active card and the second LAN card as an inactive card, wherein designating the first LAN card as an active card comprises activating the port of the first LAN card such that LAN traffic is communicated from the port to the network edge device, wherein designating the second LAN card as an inactive card comprises deactivating the port of the second LAN card such that LAN traffic is not communicated from the port to the network edge device; detecting a network failure associated with the first LAN card; protecting LAN traffic communicated between the multi-service platform and the LAN by designating the second LAN card as an active card and the first LAN card as an inactive card and communicating the LAN traffic from the second LAN card to the network edge device, wherein designating the second LAN card as an active card and the first LAN card as an inactive card comprises deactivating the port of the first LAN card and activating the port of the second LAN card indicates to the network edge device to communicate LAN traffic to the second LAN card and wherein deactivating the port of the first LAN card and activating the port of the second LAN card indicates to the network edge device to communicate LAN traffic to the second LAN card; and in response to the network edge device communicating LAN traffic to the second LAN card, sending a defect indicator to the first input of the path selector such that the path selector selects traffic from the second LAN card to send over the WAN.