With reference to the first aspect, in an implementation of the first aspect, the management channel is further used to: when a configuration table of the physical connection group changes, transmit content of a changed configuration table of the physical connection group, where the configuration table of the physical connection group is used to indicate an identifier of each physical connection in the physical connection group and a sequence between the physical connections.
With reference to the first aspect or the foregoing implementation of the first aspect, in another implementation of the first aspect, the management channel is used to transmit, based on a protocol packet, the content of the timeslot configuration table and/or the content of the configuration table of the physical connection group.
With reference to any one of the first aspect or the foregoing implementations of the first aspect, in another implementation of the first aspect, the management channel is further used to negotiate, based on the protocol packet, a change of the timeslot configuration table and/or the configuration table of the physical connection group.
With reference to any one of the first aspect or the foregoing implementations of the first aspect, in another implementation of the first aspect, all fields of M overhead code blocks in overhead code blocks transmitted over each physical connection are used for the management channel, and M is a positive integer.