Patent ID: 8782239

Claim:
An information system where an information processing apparatus and terminals requesting processing of information on the information processing apparatus are arranged in a network, the information system comprising: a plurality of intelligent nodes that are arranged in boundary positions or gateway positions of the network, and a management node, connected to the network, that manages a plurality of the intelligent nodes, wherein each of the intelligent nodes includes: an information processing section that executes information processing; a network unit including an address altering section; and a plurality of interfaces; wherein each network unit comprises: an aggregation block for aggregating received packets, a flow detection block for identifying a group of the received packets having same header information as a flow in accordance with a rule set forth with regard to the packets, a destination decision block including a table which holds, for each flow, a connection status, address information for identifying an information processing section of a respective intelligent node or the information processing apparatus and an interface; a table update block for updating the table; and an output block for outputting the received packets related to an identified flow in accordance with the table, wherein the management node is configured to perform steps of: generating a first request for copying, to the information processing section of a selected intelligent node, an application to enable the selected intelligent node to process a flow of information in place of the information processing apparatus, generating a second request for rewriting the table of the selected intelligent node for recording a destination to specify the information processing section of the selected intelligent node as the destination of a flow related to said processing, and transmitting the first request and the second request to the selected intelligent node, wherein the selected intelligent node is configured to perform a step of: copying to an information processing section an application to enable the selected intelligent node to process the flow of information based on the first request, wherein the table update block is configured to perform a step of: rewriting the address information in the table of the selected intelligent node and the interface in the table when the connection status in the table of the flow designated by the second request in the table is “not connected”, the rewritten address information and the rewritten interface are related to a flow designated by the second request, wherein the output block is configured to perform a step of: outputting the received packets related to the identified flow in accordance with the rewritten table including the rewritten address information and the rewritten interface.