COMMUNICATION APPARATUS, METHOD FOR CONTROLLING COMMUNICATION BETWEEN DIFFERENT TYPES OF DEVICES, AND METHOD FOR ELIMINATING SPECIFICITY OF OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT

摘要

The objective of the invention is to achieve the maintenance, operation and monitoring of a network environment by: eliminating the specificity and complexity of operational management accompanying the connection of different networks; eliminating on-site installation/adjustment operations; and improving the security. It can be ensured that: addresses for use only within a system are used to perform communications without using any addresses for use in the Internet or the like; any person can easily configure a network space on a group-by-group basis, e.g., a company-by-company basis, a department-by-department basis and a project-by-project basis; path information or the like is registered with a center that manages a network; any connection between different types of devices can be implemented; relay apparatuses acquire path information and perform mutual verifications; and all pieces of information flowing through the paths are encrypted.