An approach provides virtual circuit protection. Traffic is received at a network interface device configured to interface an Ethernet virtual circuit of a service provider transport network over a user network interface (UNI). The network interface device is configured as a demarcation point between a customer network and the service provider transport network. Circuit replication is performed over the virtual circuit to create a plurality of communication paths over the virtual circuit by assigning respective tags for independently switching the traffic over the communication paths. One of the communication paths is designated as a standby communication path.