Abstract: Described are a system and method for forwarding K-bytes between optical cards in a communication system. The system includes a first card and second card each connected to a backplane. The second card obtains protection-signaling information from an incoming signal arriving at the second card from over a network. The second card generates an out-of-band signal having the protection-signaling information, and transmits the out-of-band signal having the protection-signaling information to the first card in the network element. In one embodiment, the first card is a cross-connect card, and the cross-connect card simultaneously transmits the out-of-band signal with the protection-signaling information to a plurality of cards in the system.

Abstract: A system comprises a main processor, one or more sub-processors and an event queue apparatus arranged to queue events to be transmitted between the main processor and the sub-processors. The event queue apparatus comprises one or more storage devices arranged to implement a plurality of event queues; and an event queue status indicator, including a respective status component for each event queue. The status components indicate if the respective event queue contains at least one event. The main processor associates a respective priority with each status component and selects to handle an event from the event queue associated with the highest priority of the non-empty event queue(s).