Patent ID: 8593940

Claim:
A method for numbering working services on a protection ring of an Optical channel Data Unit of k order (ODUk channel protection ring), comprising: allocating an identifier to each node on the ODUk channel protection ring; specifying a direction on the ODUk channel protection ring; sending, by a first node on the ODUk channel protection ring, a notification message in the specified direction to a second node downstream of the first node in the specified direction after detecting that the first node has an added or dropped working service in a first downstream segment in the specified direction, the notification message including the identifier of the first node; receiving, by the second node, the notification message; and judging, by the second node, whether the second node has the added or dropped working service in a second downstream segment in a reverse direction of the specified direction; if not, forwarding, by the second node, the received notification message in the specified direction to a node downstream of the second node in the specified direction when determining that the working service passes through in the specified direction; if so: assigning, by the second node, a serial number to the working service according to the identifier in the notification message; and returning, by the second node after assigning the serial number to the working service according to the identifier, the serial number to the first node corresponding to the identifier.