Patent ID: 7054334

Claim:
A path size control method for a cross-connecting device connected to an upstream side cross-connecting device via a first transmission line and to a downstream side cross-connecting device via a second transmission line so as to relay a communication frame received from the first transmission line to the second transmission line in a Synchronous Digital Hierarchy/Synchronous Optical Network (SDH/SONET) network, the method comprising the steps of: detecting index information indicating a size of a path from H1 and H2 bytes of a header of a first communication frame received from the first transmission line; setting new index information into H1 and H2 bytes of a header of a second communication frame to be transmitted to the second transmission line if the path size has been specified from a manager system of the network; and setting the detected index information into the H1 and H2 bytes of the header of the second communication frame if the path size has not been specified from the manager system of the network.