Patent ID: 8320394

Claim:
A radio communication terminal which is included in a plurality of radio communication terminals and relays MAC frames, comprising: a receiving module configured to receive the MAC frames from one of the radio communication terminals, each of the MAC frames including a first field which is a first MAC address field indicating at least one radio communication terminal to which said each of the MAC frames is directly transmitted, a second field which is a second MAC address field indicating a final destination terminal, and a third field which is a third MAC address field indicating a source terminal which generates data of said each of the MAC frames, one of the MAC frames being a first MAC frame which is used to select a route to a final destination terminal and further including a fourth field which indicates a total number of relays which said each of the MAC frames has been relayed through; a first extracting module configured to extract MAC address information from the first field of said each of the received MAC frames; a first determining module configured to determine whether or not a MAC address of the radio communication terminal is the same as the MAC address information extracted by the first extracting module; a second determining module configured to determine whether or not said each of the received MAC frames is the first MAC frame if the MAC address of the radio communication terminal is determined to be the same with the MAC address information by the first determining module; a second extracting module configured to extract a first number from the fourth field of said each of the received MAC frames if said each of the received MAC frames is determined to be the first MAC frame by the second determining module; an updating module configured to update the first field of said each of the received MAC frames if the MAC address of the radio communication terminal is determined to be the same with the MAC address information by the first determining module, and further update the fourth field if said each of the received MAC frames is determined to be the first MAC frame by the second determining module, where the fourth field is updated to a second number by adding one to the first number; and a transmitting module configured to transmit said each of the MAC frames updated by the updating module.