Patent ID: 8646033

Claim:
A packet relay apparatus for accommodating a terminal device to relay transmission/reception of a packet between the terminal device and an information processing device including an authentication device, the packet relay apparatus comprising: a MAC address authentication processing unit for transmitting an authentication request to the authentication device which performs MAC address authentication using a source MAC address included in a packet received from the terminal device, while receiving an authentication determination; a Web authentication processing unit for processing Web authentication using a user name of the terminal device and password; an IEEE802.1X authentication processing unit for processing IEEE802/1X authentication; and an unauthenticated packet processing unit for transferring a packet from an unauthenticated terminal to one of the MAC address authentication processing unit, the Web authentication processing unit, and the IEEE802.1X authentication processing unit, by referring to a database; wherein the user name and the password are not the MAC address, and wherein said unauthenticated packet processing unit identifies a type of the packet depending on at least one field of layer 2 header, layer 3 header or layer 4 header, or the combination of the fields of the received packet from the terminal device, compares the type of the packet from the unauthenticated terminal with the database, transfers the packet to one of the MAC address authentication processing unit, the Web authentication processing unit, and the IEEE802.1X authentication processing unit when a corresponding entry is found, and discards the packet when no corresponding entry is found.