Patent ID: 6931435

Claim:
A communication relay apparatus, which relays a request from a plurality of client terminals to a web server apparatus, for obtaining contents, and transmitting the contents obtained from the web server apparatus to the client terminals, said communication relay apparatus executing the steps of: when receiving a plurality of requests for obtaining the same contents that have not been stored in a cache memory of the communication relay apparatus, aggregating the requests into an aggregated request for obtaining the contents; transmitting the aggregated request for obtaining the contents to the web server apparatus; when obtaining the contents, in response to the aggregated request for obtaining contents, from the web server apparatus, transmitting the obtained contents to the client terminals that transmitted the requests to the communication relay apparatus, suspending a process of a request that has not been relayed to the web server apparatus according to the aggregating step; and resuming the process of the suspended request after obtaining the contents responding to the segregated request.