A new partitioning configuration that divides a given network into overlapped protection areas is investigated. If two working sub-paths are in the adjacent different working areas, their corresponding protection sub-paths can share a wavelength on the link that belongs to the overlap between two adjacent protection areas. The objective of overlapping is to increase sharing of the protection sub-paths that belong to the adjacent protection areas. The performances of resource utilization and recovery time are improved without any significant degradation of other performances.