Patent ID: 8310968

Claim:
An access point for performing wireless communication with one or more wireless communication stations, based on a packet transmission system which allocates wireless bands by CSMA/CA, comprising: packet reception unit that receives a packet from an external communication network; buffering unit that buffers the packet received by the packet reception unit in a memory; buffering judgment unit that judges whether the packet buffered by the buffering unit is a multicast packet or not; beacon generation unit that generates a beacon, in which multicast notification data indicating that a multicast packet is buffered is set when the buffering judgment unit has judged that the packet buffered by the buffering unit is a multicast packet, the multicast notification data set to indicate that the one or more wireless communication stations to receive a multicast packet is to be shifted into a drive state and to indicate that the one or more wireless communications stations to not receive a multicast packet is to be shifted into a pause state; and beacon transmission unit that transmits the beacon generated by the beacon generation unit to the one or more of wireless communication stations.