Patent ID: 8396019
Filing Date: 2013-03-12
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A network system comprising: a transfer apparatus; and a network apparatus; wherein the transfer apparatus includes a transmitting and receiving unit that receives a plurality of transfer requests from a plurality of receivers, transmits a plurality of multicast packets to the plurality of receivers and transmits the plurality of transfer requests to the network apparatus; a MAC conversion processing unit that adds conversion information for requesting that a source unicast MAC address of each of the transfer requests is to be set as a destination MAC address of at least one of the plurality of multicast packets to the transfer requests, when the multicast packets are transmitted to the receivers requiring unicast communication, and wherein the network apparatus includes a network receiving unit that receives the plurality of transfer requests from the transfer apparatus and the plurality of multicast packets from a transmitter, a holding unit that holds destination unicast MAC addresses and destination multicast MAC addresses used for transferring the received multicast packets, wherein the destination unicast MAC addresses and the destination multicast MAC addresses are set based on a content of the transfer request, a reproduction unit that sets one of the unicast MAC addresses and multicast MAC addresses held in the holding unit to the source MAC address of each of the plurality of multicast packets, and a transmitting unit that transmits the plurality of multicast packets to the transfer apparatus, wherein the holding unit registers the source unicast MAC addresses of the received transfer request packet as the unicast destination MAC addresses of the multicast packets when the received transfer request packet has been added to the conversion information, and the holding unit registers multicast MAC addresses corresponding to destination IP addresses of the multicast packets as the destination multicast MAC addresses of the multicast packets when the received transfer request packet has not been added to the conversion information.