Abstract: A method and apparatus to establish independence between nodes in a distributed network during protection switching. A translation module that may include a cross connect table is introduced onto a backplane of a line card between a switch fabric and an egress time slot interchange (ETSI) module. Logical identifiers are assigned to the inputs of the ETSI module during system initialization. After initialization, the logical identifiers remain fixed. The translation module maps physical identifiers for incoming signals to the logical identifiers. If a line outage occurs, the translation module remaps the physical identifier for the protection line to the logical identifier corresponding to the failed line.