Method and apparatus for provisioning a protection pathway of a link joining a first point in a network and a second point in the network. The method includes the step of determining a shortest path between the first point and the second point in a protection graph, computing a length of said shortest path, determining if said link should be added to the protection graph according to said computed length and setting the shortest path in the protection graph as protection path for said link. The second step of determining includes evaluating the protection graph to determine if there no existing path or an existing path that is longer than a hop limit. Based on this evaluation, the method either adds the link or makes no change to the protection graph.