Patent ID: 8521896

Claim:
A method for negotiating a Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) session discriminator of a Pseudo Wire (PW), comprising: receiving, by a second equipment, a PW negotiation message from a first equipment, wherein the message carries BFD capability of Virtual Circuit Connection Verification (VCCV) of the PW at the first equipment and the BFD discriminator allocated to the PW; and if the PW at the second equipment supports the BFD capability, sending, by the second equipment, to the first equipment a message which carries the BFD capability of the VCCV of the PW at the second equipment and the BFD discriminator allocated to the PW after obtaining the BFD capability and the BFD discriminator from the first equipment; or, if the PW at the second equipment does not support the BFD capability, sending, by the second equipment, to the first equipment a message which carries information indicating that the PW at the second equipment does not support the BFD capability after obtaining the BFD capability and the BFD discriminator from the first equipment; wherein the first equipment negotiates with the second equipment through a Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) message; wherein the first equipment and the second equipment set up a BFD session on the connected PW after obtaining the BFD capability of the VCCV of the PW at the peer equipment and the BFD discriminator from the peer equipment; wherein a notification message is sent to the peer equipment when the BFD capability of the VCCV of the PW at the first equipment or second equipment changes; and the peer equipment that receives the notification message adjusts the BFD capability of the PW at the local equipment according to information on a BFD capability status of the PW in the message.