General Although certain signalling systems may have the capability to provide an indication when an individual circuit is faulty@ in order to maintain the required availability of the public network@ it is considered necessary to provide alarm facilities to alert maintenance staff when a group of circuits provided by a multiplex transmission system is faulty. An alarm indication can be initiated on failure of a FDM system by means of pilot supervision. On failure of a PCM system@ and alarm indication initiated at both ends by the loss of frame alignment (or multiframe alignment as appropriate) [1]@[2]. These failure indicators provide the means whereby the faulty circuits can be removed from service automatically and@ when the fault condition no longer exists@ be restored automatically by the switching control of an international exchange (see ??.4 below). Additionally@ the existence of such failure indications allow an end-to-end indication of circuit availability which is a prerequisite to the operation of Signalling System No. 7 without a per call continuity check [see Recommendations Q.724 (TUP) and Q.764 (ISUP)]. Where transmission links comprise several transmission systems in tandem@ the protection against the effects of faulty transmission on groups of circuits can only be maintained if the primary multiplex structure is maintained from end-to-end together with a transparency of alarm indications. In other cases the provisions of ?? 2 and 3 below apply. Following a transmission failure a number of specific signalling actions are required to be carried out by the switching control of an international exchange. These actions are designed to: a) prevent failure of new call attempts; b) provide appropriate failure indications on established calls; c) provide a means of releasing circuit connections beyond the point of transmission failure. Paragraph 4 below details the actions to be taken for circuits employing Signalling Systems Nos. 5@ 6 and 7 (TUP and ISUP). For circuits employing Signalling System R2@ Recommendation Q.416 details the actions to be taken. The recognition time used by the international exchange to validate the alarm ON/alarm OFF states shall be 20 ?? 10 milliseconds. The recognition time is defined as the duration that signals representing the alarm ON/OFF states must be present at the input of the exchange terminal equipment. Following recognition of the alarm ON or alarm OFF states the exchange shall carry out the actions detailed in ??.