Patent ID: 8665754

Claim:
A path generating method comprising: a first operation by a first terminal relay device and of transmitting an outbound packet from a given port among ports of a first terminal relay device of a path that is from a first device to a second device and flooding the outbound packet from the ports excluding the given port and a receiving port, wherein the first terminal relay device is among relay devices forming a network in which the path is set according to a first-in, first-learned scheme, the given port is a port specified by the first-in, first-learned scheme, the receiving port is the port that has received the outbound packet, which is a packet whose source is the first device and whose destination is the second device; a second operation of learning and flooding by a relay device that is among the relay devices and not on the path, wherein the relay device learns according to the first-in, first-learned scheme, the source of a first-arriving outbound packet that is first to arrive among the outbound packets flooded to the relay device and further learns the port number of the receiving port that received the first-arriving outbound packet, and floods the outbound packet from the ports excluding the receiving port; and a third operation of transmitting and learning by a second terminal relay device that is on the path and among the relay devices, wherein from a port of a port number of the second relay device learned according to the first-in, first-learned scheme, the second terminal relay device transmits to the second device, the outbound packet received from a relay device on the path and learns the source of the first-arriving outbound packet among the outbound packets flooded to the second terminal relay device and further learns the port number of the receiving port that received the first-arriving outbound packet.