Patent ID: 7043576

Claim:
A peripheral unit management system to manage a plurality of peripheral units using a peripheral unit manager via a network, wherein the peripheral unit manager stores property information and address information corresponding to each peripheral unit, comprising: a reading unit reading the property information and the address information from each of the peripheral units; a determining unit determining that one of the peripheral units has been replaced when the property information read does not coincide with the property information stored in the peripheral unit manager, and when detecting that the address information of one of the peripheral units is new, and an obtaining unit obtaining the new address information of the one of the peripheral units when the determining unit determines that the one of the peripheral units has been replaced, and, when the property information read does not coincide with the property information stored in the peripheral unit manager, storing the property information read and the new address information of the one of the peripheral units, and when the property information read does coincide with the property information stored in the peripheral unit manager, storing data being accumulated in for the peripheral unit with the new address information of the one of the peripheral units after setting the property information to correspond to the new address information.