The present invention relates to a method for restoring connections in a network, in particular in a telecommunication network, the network being provided with a data plane, a control plane and a number of nodes (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), comprising:detecting and localizing a fault (F) within the network,determining affected connections,selecting alternative paths (1-5-3-4, 1-2-7-4, 1-5-2-3-4, 1-2-5-3-4, 1-2-3-6-4) available to recover said failed connections,replacing nominal paths (1-2-3-4) of the affected connections with selected alternative paths (1-5-3-4, 1-2-7-4, 1-5-2-3-4, 1-2-5-3-4, 1-2-3-6-4) for realizing said connections.For optimizing the restoration of the connectionsfor detecting the fault (F), determining the affected connections, defining and sorting a
list of affected connections according to priority and bandwidth and sending out the
list in the control plane a control plane element of a fault adjacent node (2) is used,for receiving the sorted
list and initiating the replacing of nominal paths (1-2-3-4) of the affected connections with selected alternative paths (1-5-3-4, 1-2-7-4, 1-5-2-3-4, 1-2-5-3-4, 1-2-3-6-4) in order of the list of sorted connections, control plane elements (CPE) of terminating network nodes (1) of the nominal paths (1-2-3-4) is used.