In a network such as a General Packet Radio Service (General Packet Radio Service, GPRS) network, an Internet Protocol (Internet Protocol, IP) network or an Evolved Packet Core (Evolved Packet Core, EPC) network, in the case that a first node and a second node are neighboring nodes, if the second node detects that the first node occurs a failure, the second node needs to process context information associated with the first node, for example, the second node deletes the context information associated with the first node or sets the context information associated with the first node be invalid. The case that the second node detects that the first node occurs a failure may be that the second node detects that the first node is reset, or the second node detects the path to the first node is faulty, or the second node detects that the first node is unreachable.
During the implementation of the present invention, the inventors find that, in the case that the first node and the second node are not neighboring nodes, if the first node occurs a failure, the second node cannot perceive the failure of the first node, so that the second node does not process the context information associated with the first node. The context information in the second node wastes network resources, and also may cause a potential risk of exception to the network.