Patent ID: 7697461

Claim:
A method for discovering topology structure in a MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) ring network, comprising: when receiving a topology discovering message, determining, by a node in the MPLS ring network, whether the topology discovering message is sent by the node itself; if the topology discovering message is sent by the node itself, updating information of topology structure of the MPLS ring network stored in the node according to information of topology structure of the MPLS ring network carried by the topology discovering message; otherwise, appending the information of the topology structure of the MPLS ring network stored in the node to the topology discovering message and forwarding the topology discovering message to a next node; wherein the information of the topology structure of the MPLS ring network is stored in a topology structure information database in each node in the MPLS ring network; the information of the topology structure of the MPLS ring network comprises: a node ID for identifying the node when constructing and updating the topology, service configuration and administration data for configuring a service in the MPLS ring network, node validity state data for indicating whether the node is valid or invalid, network protection state data for providing output information of a protection state of the network, bandwidth configuration and administration data for configuring bandwidth for each service carried by the network, and ring network topology data for co-operating with the process of discovering and maintaining the topology of the MPLS ring network; and the process of updating the information of the topology structure of the MPLS ring network stored in the node comprises updating the information of the topology structure of the MPLS ring network stored in the topology structure information database of the node.