Before the 1970s, networks were primarily used to carry voice or telephone calls over circuit-switched networks. Failures and service outages in such transport networks were handled mainly at the circuit layer, and many a time manually. Most of the remedial actions included routing of the call by manual configuration of switches by network operators. Over time the capacity of the transport networks increased, data overlay networks were created and a large number of end-users instituted private voice and packet networks.

With the advent of fiber optic transmission systems and eventually wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) the bandwidth of a single fiber soared. With increasing deployment of fibers in networks, the risk of losing large volumes of traffic due to a span cut or a node failure has also increased tremendously. In the 1990s Bellcore developed the SONET (synchronous optical network) standard and standardized the concept of self-healing rings. It was soon followed by the equivalent standard named SDH (synchronous digital hierarchy) in Europe. This appeared to be the final solution. Many service providers could replace all of their cumbersome and expensive point-to-point transmission systems with a few multi-node, self-healing SONET rings. Many carriers joined the SONET ring bandwagon.

With further developments in technology, more and more mesh-network topologies started emerging. Failure management still remained a part of the solution and recovering from them remained a challenging issue. It soon started to fuel the everlasting question that still prevails to this day: which is a better option, ring-based or mesh-based restoration? Over the years, as the traffic increased a mesh-based approach seemed to be a more viable option for providing restoration, compared to a traditional ring network.