Patent ID: 11936490
Assignee: NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE CORPORATION
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 4:
5. A non-transitory recording medium storing a communication control program, wherein execution of the communication control program causes one or more computers implemented in a first layer 2 (L2) switch to perform operations comprising:
receiving, from a second L2 switch, a copy of upstream communication transmitted from a network apparatus, the second L2 switch configured to relay the upstream communication;
specifying (i) a network apparatus serving as a transmission source of the upstream communication, based on apparatus information indicating one or more MAC addresses set for each network apparatus and (ii) a transmission source MAC address included in the received copy of the upstream communication;
referring to the apparatus information and MAC address information indicating, for each port of a plurality of ports of the first L2 switch, a MAC address of an apparatus connected to each port of the first L2 switch, thereby specifying (i) a port among the plurality of ports of the first L2 switch connected to the specified network apparatus serving as the transmission source of the upstream communication and (ii) a MAC address of the transmission source of the upstream communication connected via the specified port;
storing session information of the upstream communication in which information regarding the specified port and the specified MAC address is associated with header information set for the received copy of the upstream communication, in a storage unit; and
transferring, upon receiving downstream communication corresponding to the upstream communication, the downstream communication to the specified network apparatus serving as the transmission source of the upstream communication, using the specified port and the specified MAC address indicated by the session information of the upstream communication stored in the storage unit.