1. A defect is an alarm such as loss of signals or frames, while a failure is a defect that persists beyond an allocated time threshold and can trigger automatic protection switching.
2. Common defects include loss of signal (LOS), out of frame (OOF), and loss of frame (LOF), which can be caused by issues like cable cuts, signal attenuation, or equipment faults.
3. Network protection schemes like linear and ring architectures with bidirectional and unidirectional options can provide redundancy to reroute traffic if a failure occurs on the primary path.