FIG. 5 is a schematic structural diagram of a transmitter according to an embodiment of the present invention. It should be understood that, the transmitter 500 in FIG. 5 can implement steps executed by the transmit end in FIG. 3. To avoid repetition, details are not described herein again. The transmitter 500 includes an obtaining module 510, configured to obtain a to-be-transmitted service stream, where the service stream is to be transmitted by using a target virtual connection supported by a physical connection group between a transmit end and a receive end, the physical connection group includes multiple physical connections and supports at least one virtual connection, and the target virtual connection is any one of the at least one virtual connection. The transmitter 500 also includes a determining module 520, configured to determine, from total bandwidth resources of the multiple physical connections and according to timeslot configuration tables used by the multiple physical connections, a timeslot bandwidth resource that belongs to the target virtual connection, where a timeslot configuration table used by each physical connection is used to indicate a virtual connection to which each timeslot bandwidth resource obtained by dividing a bandwidth resource of each physical connection belongs. The transmitter 500 also includes a transmission module 530, configured to transmit the service stream to the receive end by using the timeslot bandwidth resource that belongs to the target virtual connection, where an overhead code block transmitted over each physical connection includes a first field, the first field indicates an identifier of the timeslot configuration table used by each physical connection, the overhead code block transmitted over each physical connection further includes fields used for a management channel, and the management channel is used to: when the timeslot configuration table used by each physical connection changes, transmit content of a changed timeslot configuration table.
