Method of protecting ATM connections in a telecommunications network

摘要

A method of protecting ATM connections in a telecommunications network including at least one protection domain which covers only a portion of a connection, each protection domain comprising a source node and a peer sink node. Each source node and its peer sink node can be interconnected by at least two alternative connection segments and can switch over from one connection segment to the other. Any node of the network can send an alarm message downstream over a current path and each node can store a connection fault status when it receives such an alarm message. Each sink node which receives the alarm message sends a switchover request message to its peer source node to request a switchover which is executed only if the peer source node has not itself stored an alarm message. The sink node switches over only if the peer source node has responded positively.