System for establishing new path in ring network and dividing ring shaped path into plurality of ring shaped paths by being rid of faulty path

摘要

A conference system is formed by multiple workstations which have individual conference control programs and are connected to a network, with each workstation having a destination workstation determined in advance so that a ring-shaped logical communication path is formed on the network. A conference control program which detects a fault on its receiving path during a conference sends a fault recovery request message including an identifier of the conference control program itself and the address of the workstation to the neighboring workstation, and the conference control program of the neighboring workstation relays the received fault recovery request message to the next workstation on the ring-shaped logical communication path so that the fault recovery request message is propagated on the ring-shaped logical communication path. The conference control program of a workstation which is located immediately upstream of the fault and is therefore unable to send the received fault recovery request message to the neighboring workstation carries out a procedure of establishing a new communication path to the conference control program of the workstation which issued the fault recovery request message.