Patent ID: 8416680

Claim:
A communication apparatus for transporting data in a network section employing redundancy for logical path connection, the communication apparatus comprising: a group data memory to store group data records which associate protection group identifiers with path selection data, the protection group identifiers each identifying a protection group that provides at least two logical paths constituting a redundant logical path and is associated with a plurality of flows of data to be transported via a logical path selected from among the logical paths, the path selection data specifying which logical path to use to forward data in each protection group; a receive data processor to receive data and retrieve a group data record corresponding to the received data out of the group data memory; a forwarding processor to forward the received data according to the group data record retrieved by the receive data processor; and a path data memory to store path data records which associate data identifiers and logical path data with forwarding group identifiers, the data identifiers identifying the plurality of flows of data, the logical path data indicating physical paths corresponding to the logical paths, the forwarding group identifiers each indicating which protection group is used to forward data, wherein the receive data processor further retrieves a path data record corresponding to the received data from the path data memory based on a data identifier contained in the received data, and retrieves a group data record corresponding to the received data from the group data memory based on the forwarding group identifier found in the retrieved path data record, and wherein the forwarding processor determines which logical path to use to output the received data based on the path selection data in the group data record retrieved by the receive data processor.