Patent ID: 7801022

Claim:
A method for reducing the capacity of a Virtual Concatenation Group (VCG), comprising: when a network management device sends a downlink-member removing command to remove a downlink member to a Sink in the VCG, sending, by the Sink that receives the downlink-member removing command from the network management device in the VCG to a Source, failure state information indicating that the downlink member will be removed; sending, by the Source that receives the failure state information in the VCG, do-not-use information to the Sink indicating that the downlink member will not be used any longer, and removing, by the Sink, the downlink member after receiving the do-not-use information from the Source; sending, by the network management device, an uplink-member removing command to remove an uplink member to the Source after the Sink removes the downlink member, and removing, by the Source, the uplink member which will not be used any longer to complete operations of reducing the capacity of the VCG when receiving the uplink-member removing command from the network management device; the Sink and the Source supporting Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS) protocol.