Therefore, the FW #4 may cause the transmission source address, the destination address, the protocol type, and the port number of the flow A to be included in an entry setting request message and may address, to the FWC 7, and transmit the entry setting request message (processing operation P44).
Note that in response to the transmission of the entry setting request message, the FW #4 may delete the discarded-packet information and the totalization result. Therefore, it is possible to reduce a capacity prepared by the FW #x for storing the discarded-packet information and the totalization result.
Upon receiving the entry setting request message from the FW #4, the FWC 7 identifies the transmission source FW #1 serving as a discarding entry setting target, based on a transmission source address of discarded packets, included in the relevant message. The identification of the transmission source FW #1 may be performed based on the FW configuration information 741, as described in, for example, 
In addition, the FWC 7 addresses, to the identified transmission source FW #1, and transmits an entry setting request message including the information of the discarding entry received from the reception FW #4 of the flow A.
If the relevant entry setting request message is received by the transmission source FW #1 and the discarding entry is registered in the entry table 54 in the FW #1, packets of the flow A are discarded by the FW #1 after that.