A management system for telecommunication switch is described. The management system is useful for providing operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) functions in a terabit switch. The management system is a scalable management system, whereby processing of large amounts of network management traffic from carrier operators and virtual private network (VPN) customers in a terabit switch is enabled. The management system is efficiently implemented by utilizing surplus processing resources in the network interface cards of the switch. The management system includes a protocol unit residing on a first processor card of the switch for receiving a management request, a first request unit residing on the first processor card for creating a request object in response to the received management request, and a first action unit residing on a first network interface card of the switch for executing the received management request in response to an instruction from the request object.