System for group-based distributed protection switching

System for providing distributed group-based protection switching at a network element in a communication network, wherein the communication network includes a plurality of interconnected network elements, and wherein the network element includes first and second card logic coupled to the communication network to transmit and receive network traffic, the system comprising:

• bus logic coupled between the first and second card logic, the bus logic operates to transmit the network traffic between the first and second card logic;
• selector logic distributed between the first and second card logic, wherein the selector logic includes first and second switching engines that have associated activity states, respectively, that indicate how the network traffic is routed through the network element, and wherein the switching engines generate new activity states based on selected fault indicators;
• and
• a processing system operable to detect fault conditions and generate the selected fault indicators, and wherein the processing system operates to receive the new activity states from the switching engines and perform one or more switch reconfigurations at the network element based on the new activity states to implement the distributed group-based protection switching.