A packet transmitting method wherein an explicit multicast packet can be transmitted with the consumption of communication bands of broadcast media being suppressed. According to this method, a link level multicast is used to transmit an explicit multicast packet only to next hop nodes that, even when receiving the explicit multicast packet through the link level multicast, will not output the same packet to the broadcast media, while a unicast is used to transmit an explicit multicast packet to the other next hop nodes.