The embodiments disclosed herein provide a mechanism for sharing protection resources in an arbitrary network topology involving pre-computing the protection resources so that data-plane-based protection can be used to activate the protection resources upon detection of a failure, thus, providing faster switching times than typical control-plane-based solutions. This is accomplished by configuring a mesh network to include, for a working path in the network, one or more protection paths with the same end nodes as the working path, where each protection path includes at least one intermediate node that is not part of the working path. The intermediate node accepts a protection request from one of the end nodes and determines whether a local resource for a protection path is available. If the local resource is available, the intermediate node forwards the protection request along the protection path, but, if the local resource is unavailable, the intermediate node notifies the end node from which the protection request originated that the protection path is unavailable.
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