In a network wherein a data plane for communicating user data, and a control plane for managing data forwarders are configured of different media, the path teardown of the data plane which is forwarding the data is prevented when a fault has occurred in only the control plane. When the GMPLS controller of the control plane has detected refresh timeout with respect to an adjacent node (101 in FIG. 1), it checks whether or not a transmission equipment corresponding to a faulty controller has a fault (102), and it maintains a path state (103) in a case where the fault is limited to the control plane. Thus, the exchange of refresh messages with the adjacent node is continued without cleaning up the resources of the transmission equipment (104 through 107).