A method in a Maintenance Association Endpoint, MEP, for controlling traffic between a first network element and a second network element connected by a working Traffic Engineering Service Instance, TESI, and a protection TESI. The first network element sets a Traffic field in a Connectivity Check Message, CCM, sent to the second network element. The Traffic field may be set by utilizing a reserved bit within a Flags field of the CCM. The Traffic field indicates which TESI is being utilized to transport the traffic. The second network element takes action to control the traffic based upon a value of the Traffic field in the received CCM. When the Traffic field value in the received CCM does not match the Traffic field value in CCMs sent from the second network element for a predefined period of time, the second network element moves the traffic from its current TESI to the other TESI.