Communication method and apparatus

A communication apparatus, applied to a spine node in a spine-leaf architecture network, the apparatus comprising:

• a receiving unit, to receive a first IP packet sent by a first leaf node through a first interface;
• wherein the first leaf node is located in a spine-leaf architecture network which comprises the spine node;
• a first obtaining unit, to obtain a forwarding entry for forwarding the first IP packet;
• wherein the forwarding entry comprises an egress interface field and a fast bypass tag field, with the egress interface field being to instruct a second interface for forwarding the first IP packet;
• a determining unit, to determine a third interface from a fast recovery leaf node group in response to determining that the second interface fails and a value of the fast bypass tag field is a first value, wherein the third interface is different from the second interface and is connected to a second leaf node;
• a sending unit, to send a second IP packet to the second leaf node through the third interface, the second IP packet comprising a destination MAC address and the first IP packet, so that the second leaf node performs split-horizon forwarding for the second IP packet based on the destination MAC address.