Ring protection is the system used to assure communication continues in the event of failure of one of the paths.
In this architecture traffic is sent over two parallel routes, and the destination or the receiving end selects the better of these two signals.
Its major drawback is the wastage of bandwidth, since no traffic travels through the redundant path.
When any failure occurs, both the source and destination switch onto the redundant or alternate path.
Network utilization is better in this architecture, but it requires signaling overhead and also results in slower restoration.