Patent ID: 8351462

Claim:
A service switching system, comprising: a service controller, configured to receive a request for switching between a unicast service and a multicast service, and send a resource reuse indication as a control message to a resource manager, to instruct the resource manager to reuse access line resources during switching between the unicast service and the multicast service; the resource manager, configured to receive the resource reuse indication sent by the service controller, and send a resource reuse operation indication as a control message to a network edge node, to reuse the access line resources during switching between the unicast service and the multicast service; the network edge node, configured to reuse the access line resources during switching between the unicast service and the multicast service according to the resource reuse operation indication sent by the resource manager, or according to a multicast join request message sent by a user terminal; and the user terminal, configured to send the request for switching between the unicast service and the multicast service to the service controller, or send the multicast join request to the network edge node, to request to switch between the unicast service and the multicast service.