One of the important objectives of every telecommunication operator, when designing an optical network, is to provide a satisfying quality of service in the most cost-effective way to the final customer. As every network is frequently exposed to many different threats causing network disruptions, network recovery is the prime capability needed to achieve this objective. After a brief introduction on the existing reactive recovery methods we present a new method of proactive detection and explain how the method can be applied to some recovery schemes and discuss its benefits.