A method is applied to a ring link, where the ring link includes a first node, a second node, a third node, and a fourth node in sequence. According to the method, the first node receives first traffic, where the first node is a source node that sends the first traffic on the ring link; and the first node sends the first traffic to the third node, where two reachable paths with equal hop counts are included from the first node to the third node, the first node sends the first traffic to the third node on a preset first transmission path, the first transmission path passes through the second node, and the first transmission path is one of the two reachable paths with equal hop counts. This method can reduce computing load of nodes while implementing non-blocking switching of traffic between the nodes.