The invention includes a method for monitoring packet protection quality. A first method according to the present invention includes initializing a current sliding window having a current sliding window length, measuring a current delay window length of a current delay window by monitoring a difference between a leading path counter and a trailing path counter, and identifying a quality degradation condition in response to a determination that the current delay window length exceeds the current sliding window length. A second method according to the present invention includes measuring a leading path quality associated with a leading path, measuring a trailing path quality associated with a trailing path, and identifying a path quality degradation condition in response to at least one of determining that the leading path quality measure crosses a leading path quality threshold and determining that the trailing path quality measure crosses a trailing path quality threshold.