A method may include generating, by a device, a set of bit masks associated with locating frame alignment signal (FAS) data. The set of bit masks may be utilized by multiple framer circuits associated with identifying a start of one more frames of multiple lower order Optical channel Data Unit (ODU) flows multiplexed in a higher order ODU flow. The method may include detecting, by the device, the FAS data at a particular byte location in a particular lower order ODU flow, of the multiple lower order ODU flows, based on the set of bit masks. The method may include identifying, by the device, the start of one or more frames of the particular lower order ODU flow based on detecting the FAS data. The one or more frames may be associated with an ITU-T G.709 Optical Transport Network frame based signal.