Abstract: In this paper, we propose a shared sub-path protection (SSPP) algorithm for protecting the multi-link failures of the dual-risk breakdowns in WDM mesh networks. SSPP firstly computes a minimum hop primary path for each connection request, and it follows to compute two SRLG disjoint and minimum cost backup paths for each sub-path on the primary path. The simulation results show that SSPP not only can completely protect the multi-link failures of the dual-risk breakdowns but also can make the tradeoffs between the resource utilization ratio (or blocking ratio) and the protection-switching time.