A method for protecting against link failures in a communications network having a plurality of paths between senders and receivers is provided. The method includes sending data units by the senders over the communications network on working circuits, applying network coding to form a combination of data units from data units from a plurality of the senders, and sending the combination of data units over the communications network on a backup circuit. If one or more link failures occur in the working circuits resulting in loss of one or more of the data units, then the method further includes recovering the one or more of the data units from the combination of data units transmitted on the backup circuit. The backup circuit used to carry the combination of data units may be implemented in-band with user data or may be implemented as out-of-band backup circuits.