Distributed protection is an important choice for distribution network protection. However, because of the lack of overall operational information and configuration information of a distribution network, it is difficult to achieve accurate and rapid protection strategy adjustment for current distributed protection under the changes of topology and equipment operational status. Therefore, this paper proposes an intelligent distributed protection strategy which is suitable for different configuration conditions of switches. With the help of timing settings, intelligent decision-making of distribution network protection is realized. In order to realize the self-adaptive timing settings, we examine the dynamic operating status through online topology analysis, and further define the timing distance according to the operational order requirements between the switches, and obtain the timing setting value satisfying the requirements by calculating the maximum timing distance. The simulation results show that the proposed method can correctly deal with various fault scenarios, and show great prospect for application in a distribution network. This work is supported by the Science and Technology Project of China Southern Power Grid Co., Ltd. (No. 031300KK52180108).