Abstract: With grid modernization in distribution systems (DSs), physical components and cyber systems are tightly integrated. This cyber-physical integrated power system is more vulnerable in the events of disasters. Communication failures may degrade the monitoring and control functions of cyber-physical DSs during disasters, thus restricting their load recovery capability. Therefore, the recovery of communication network is essential for the post-disaster load recovery in DSs. Based on the ring network structure and the software defined networking (SDN) technology, this paper proposes a cyber-physical integrated recovery scheme for DS communication networks and DS load. The first step of this scheme recovers the post-disaster DS communication network, and then controls the topology of the DS to establish microgrids with distributed generators (DGs) as their power sources. To speed up the computation of the scheme, a heuristic computation method is also presented. The IEEE 33-node and IEEE 123-node test systems are used to verify the effectiveness and benefits of the proposed method.