Patent ID: 8588239

Claim:
A relaying apparatus that relays a packet received from an apparatus belongs to a virtual network to the other apparatus, the relaying apparatus comprising: a reception port that receives a packet; a transmission port that transmits the packet; queues for registering the received packet, each of the queues corresponding to a priority indicative of an order of precedence for relaying the packet and a plurality of VLAN numbers handled as one virtual network group; a first memory that stores a total size of packets accumulated in all queues having same priority for each priority; a second memory that stores a threshold of the total size of packets set for each queue; and a controller that registers the received packet into a queue that corresponds to a plurality of VLAN numbers set for the received packet; wherein the controller compares the total size of packets accumulated in all queues corresponding to a priority set for the received packet with a threshold of the total size of packets set for a corresponding queue, and discards the received packet when the total size of packets accumulated in all queues corresponding to the priority of the received packet exceeds the threshold of the total size of packets set for the corresponding queue.