NETWORK RELAY APPARATUS, DATA RECEIVING APPARATUS, DATA TRANSMITTING APPARATUS, MULTIPATH MTU FINDING METHOD AND MULTIPATH MTU FINDING SYSTEM

摘要

Disclosed is a technique wherein, when there exist a plurality of packet routing paths, a source of transmitting a packet selects an optimum packet length to efficiently utilize network resources. According to this technique, when there exist a plurality of packet routing paths for a packet to be transferred from a data transmitting apparatus (103) to a data receiving apparatus (102) via a network relay apparatus (101), for example, the path via a network A (104) and the path via a network B (105), the network relay apparatus or data receiving apparatus searches for and retrieves path MTU information of those paths and notifies multipath MTU information including the retrieval results to the data transmitting apparatus. The data transmitting apparatus refers to the multipath MTU information to compare the path MTU information of those paths with each other, thereby deciding a packet length suitable for the packet to be transmitted to the data receiving apparatus.