A manner of providing redundancy protection for a data center network that is both reliable and low-cost, hi a data center network where the data traffic between numerous access nodes and a network core layer via primary aggregation nodes, an optical network device such as and OLT (optical line terminal) is provided as a backup aggregation node for one or more of the primary aggregation nodes. When a communication path through a primary aggregation node fails, traffic is routed through the optical network device. In a preferred embodiment, a communication link is formed from a plurality of access nodes to a single port of the OLT or other optical network device via an optical splitter that combines upstream transmissions and distributes downstream transmissions. The upstream transmissions from the plurality of access nodes may occur according to an allocation schedule generated when the backup aggregation node is needed.