A protected communication network utilizes a link-based recovery strategy that supports independent recovery paths for individual demands, where each link includes one or more lines and each line can support one or more demands. Failure of one or more—or even all—of the lines/ports of a link will typically result in the independent rerouting of the affected demands along one or more link-detour paths. The flexibility afforded by recovery at the granularity of a demand supports the computation of more-optimal link-detour paths and a corresponding increase in sharing of network resources between disjoint failures. The network also addresses the restricted case where all demands on a line/port are recovered along the same link-detour path.