Protected optical crossconnect

An optical protected crossconnect for switching a plurality of input optical signals to a plurality of locations in a non-blocking manner has at least three stages (a first external stage, at least one center stage and a second external stage), the first external stage optically coupled to the second external stage through the at least one center stage, with at least one connection between each module in the first and second external stages and center stage modules, the first external stage having a number of modules. Each module has a plurality of external input/output ports, at least one protection port, a plurality of redundancy means, each redundancy means optically coupled to one of the input/output ports, and a plurality of second ports for coupling input signals from the external module to a center stage or from coupling output signals from the center stage to the external module. Each redundancy means (switch or coupler/combiner) is also coupled to a protection port of another external module of the external stage. This arrangement provides efficient "1 for 1" redundancy protection of external and central stages of the optical crossconnect.