Patent ID: 8798061

Claim:
A communication apparatus for communicating conversations, comprising: a transmission policy holding section configured to hold transmission policies each corresponding to a conversation, each transmission policy identifying an output Media Access Control (MAC) address and an output address of an output port from which a frame of the conversation is sent, a destination MAC address, a destination IP address and a destination address of a destination port to which the frame of the conversation is destined and sequential assignments of the output MAC addresses and the destination MAC addresses; a transmitted frame control section configured to modify transmitted frames of the conversation in accordance with the corresponding transmission policy held by said transmission policy holding section by sequentially changing at least the output and destination MAC addresses of each frame of the conversation as established by the sequential assignments identified in the transmission policy corresponding to the conversation; and a layer 2 switch receiving frames from the output port and transmitting those frames to the destination port in accordance with the sequentially changing output and destination MAC addresses, thereby performing link operations in accordance with the layer 2 protocols of Open Systems interconnection (OSI) standard.