A system and method for resilient communication services under multi-chassis APS protected routers, including one or more of the following: an add-drop multiplexer; a working chassis; a plurality of working lines of communication between the add-drop multiplexer and the working chassis; a protection chassis; a plurality of protection lines of communication between the add-drop multiplexer and the protection chassis; and a multi-chassis APS control link between the working chassis and the protection chassis, wherein a plurality of active entities in the working chassis having state information send their state information to parallel inactive entities in the protection chassis by way of the multi-chassis APS, ones of said active entities send changed state information to parallel ones of said inactive entities through said multi-chassis APS control link upon a state change in said ones of said active entities, and ones of said inactive entities that were down request current state information from said active entities through said multi-chassis APS control link when said ones of said inactive entities that were down come back up after being down.