Abstract: In a communications network, a method and apparatus for providing QoS parameters based protection against network failure scenarios. The invention selectively allocates network resources for protection of a network communication service based on a QoS parameter requirement for the particular network communication service. An alarm provides notification of a failure scenario disrupting network resources interrupting the network communication service. In response to the alarm notification, the system automatically switches a path of the network communication service to make use of the network resources, which have been pre-allocated for protection of the network communication service.