Patent ID: 7966016

Claim:
A communication apparatus, comprising: a computer processing unit including a processor configured to determine at least one of (1) whether an architecture of a network with which the communication apparatus communicates is a network on which the communication apparatus communicates with another apparatus via a base station or a network on which the communication apparatus directly communicates with the another apparatus, not via the base station, and (2) a number of apparatuses on the network; and a switching unit configured to switch between performing encrypted communication with a falsification detection processing and communication and performing communication without the falsification detection processing, based on the determination by the computer processing unit, wherein the switching unit is switched to perform encrypted communication with the falsification detection processing when it is determined that the architecture of the network provides for communication with another apparatus via the base station, the switching unit is switched to perform encrypted communication without the falsification detection processing when it is determined that the architecture of the network provides for communication with the another apparatus directly and a number of apparatuses on the network are greater than a threshold number of apparatuses on the network, wherein the communication apparatus has a function to perform falsification detection processing to determine whether a data packet received by the communication apparatus is falsified by comparing a packet number involved in the received data packet and a packet number administrated by the communication apparatus.