The subject matter described herein includes providing virtual 1:N automatic protection switching and dynamic, in service configuration change for optical network interface equipment. According to one aspect of the subject matter described herein, a method for providing virtual 1:N automatic protection switching (APS) for optical network interface equipment is disclosed. The method includes configuring N optical network interface cards (ONICs) as working cards, each working card having sending and receiving optical interfaces, wherein N is an integer greater than 1. A single ONIC is configured as a protection card for providing N optical interfaces for providing redundant interface protection for each of the optical interfaces on the N working cards. In response to detecting a failure of one of the N working cards or a failure of one of the optical interfaces on one of the N working cards, optical networking communications that would have been sent to or received by the failed card are automatically sent and received using a protecting interface on the protection card that is associated with the failed card.