Patent ID: 8064456

Claim:
A frame relay apparatus comprising: an acquisition unit to acquire a frame from any one of a plurality of input ports connected with a first subnet and a second subnet; a setting unit to set an output port corresponding to a destination of the frame acquired by the acquisition unit; an assignment unit to assign, to the frame, a flag indicating whether the frame is used for one of an intra-subnet communication where the frame is transferred within the first subnet or the second subnet, and an inter-subnet communication where the frame is transferred between the first subnet and the second subnet, different fee systems being applied to the intra-subnet communication and the inter-subnet communication; a registration unit to store data of the flag assigned to the frame as well as a source address and a port number of the frame acquired by the acquisition unit in a learning table storing a correspondence between an address and a port number; a first transmission unit to transmit the frame to the first subnet via the output port in the case where the output port of the frame set by the setting unit is connected to the first subnet; and a second transmission unit to transmit the frame to the second subnet via the output port in the case where the output port of the frame set by the setting unit is connected to the second subnet.