Patent ID: 6907040

Claim:
A network interconnection apparatus comprising: a receiving unit configured to receive a signaling message for establishing a first virtual connection from a previous-hop node; a first memory unit configured to store, when information described in a prescribed portion of a network-layer-protocol identifying information region of the signaling message received by the receiving unit indicates that a datalink-layer switching is to be performed, a first connection identifier for identifying the first virtual connection in common with the previous-hop node by extracting information described in a remaining portion other than the prescribed portion within the network-layer-protocol identifying information region; a second memory unit configured to receive a flow-notifying message from the previous-hop node, the flow-notifying message being used to correlate the first connection identifier and a packet-flow to be transferred through the first virtual connection, and the second memory unit being configured to store a correspondence between the first virtual connection and a second virtual connection to a next-hop node of the packet-flow indicated by the flow-notifying message; and a transfer unit configured to transfer a frame received from the first virtual connection onto the second virtual connection by referring to the correspondence stored in the second memory unit.