Patent ID: 8532105

Claim:
An image forming apparatus connectable to a network, the image forming apparatus comprising: a MAC controller to receive and parse at least one packet from a host apparatus, and transmit the packet selectively in accordance with parsing results; a main memory to store the packet transmitted from the MAC controller; a central processing unit (CPU) coupled to the main memory to process the packet stored in the main memory; and a printing unit controlled by the CPU to perform a printing operation in accordance with the packet processed by the CPU; the MAC controller comprising: a network interface unit to receive the at least one packet from the host apparatus; a memory unit in which the received packet is stored; a protocol type setting unit to set a receivable protocol type of the packet; and a controller to selectively transmit the packet stored in the memory unit to the main memory if the stored packet corresponds to the receivable protocol type set in the protocol type setting unit and to prohibit the transmission of the packet stored in the memory unit of the MAC controller to the main memory by deleting the stored packet if the stored packet does not correspond to the receivable protocol type set in the protocol type setting unit, wherein, when the packet stored in the memory unit of the MAC controller is transmitted to the main memory, the CPU is operable to process the packet stored in the main memory to generate image data and control the printing unit to perform a printing operation based on the generated image data, wherein the controller of the MAC controller is adapted to reduce a load on the CPU coupled to the main memory by prohibiting the transmission of the packet stored in the memory unit of the MAC controller to the main memory.