MECHANISM FOR LIMITING THE NUMBER OF TERMINALS TO BE SIMULTANEOUSLY USED IN COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a mechanism for limiting the number of terminals to be simultaneously used in a communication system in order to limit the number of terminals capable of simultaneously utilizing communication service without using a specific function of a terminal and specific certification software. SOLUTION: A management server 1 is provided with a table 13 registering the number of terminals allowed to be connected. A table management function 15 in a terminal side communication equipment 9 prepares a filtering table 17 having entries corresponding to the number of terminals allowed to be connected which is sent from the server 1. The function 15 extracts the destination address of a down packet and the transmitting source address of an up packet, and when there are free entries in the table 17, registers respectively extracted addresses in these free entries together with time stamps. A filtering function 23 filters respective packets based on the filtering table 17.