Refer to the exhibit. In the DWDM network, a ring topology carries multiple services between two sites. Which option describes the employed protection design?

Y-cable protection uses a physical Y-shaped splitter to duplicate the transmit signal to two line cards simultaneously, which is a single-node point-to-point redundancy scheme and is not applicable to a ring topology serving multiple services.

Splitter protection uses an optical power splitter to broadcast the same signal over two separate paths at once, typically applied in point-to-point or hub-and-spoke architectures rather than ring topologies serving multiple services between two sites.

Client protection delegates failure detection and path switchover to the client devices (routers or switches) rather than to the DWDM optical transport layer. In a ring topology between two sites, each client can reach the remote site via two diverse paths around the ring; when one path fails, the client equipment independently switches its traffic to the other path. This model is appropriate for multi-service rings because each client manages its own protection without requiring the DWDM layer to coordinate protection switching for every wavelength or service.

UDLD is a Cisco Layer 2 protocol that detects unidirectional Ethernet link failures; it is not a DWDM optical protection or switching mechanism.

FEC (Forward Error Correction) is an optical modulation technique that corrects bit errors to improve signal quality over long spans; it does not provide path redundancy or protection switching in a ring topology.