Abstract: The present invention relates to a data exchange and a data exchanging method each suitable for a communication system which tends to be congested due to high-speed communication such as a frame relay network. The data exchange that accommodates plural data terminals via terminal trunks includes a congestion status detecting unit for detecting the congestion status in a standard transit trunk, and the transit trunk control unit including a first alternate control unit that controls to transfer data to be transferred by a roundabout route using a backup transit trunk, based on detection information from the congestion status detecting unit. The purpose of the present invention is to suppress the occurrence of congestion or the frame disposal of a frame at a congestion occurrence time.

Abstract: The present invention has as its object to provide a frame relay switching node for enabling the performance of fault traces without causing insufficiency in the trace area. To achieve this object, in the case where the discarding of a frame has been performed by the frame reception processing section or by the relay frame reception processing section, or in the case where the loss of a frame has occurred within the relay frame reception processing section, the contents of the discarded or lost frame are reported to the frame relay trace control section. The frame relay trace control section is made to set within the trace area only the contents and the discard factors of frames that have been discarded or lost.