Patent ID: 7305003

Claim:
A system dispersing the load of a network in data communications between a monitoring unit and a plurality of remote nodes that are connected to the monitoring unit via a broadband network, wherein the monitoring unit comprises: a communication order determining unit that determines an order of communications between the monitoring unit and the plurality of remote nodes, in order to avoid local traffic congestion in a communication route within the broadband network; a communication interval determining unit that determines a communication interval between a remote node with which the monitoring unit communicates a first time and a different remote node with which the monitoring unit communicates a next time, among the plurality of remote nodes that communicate with the monitoring unit; a communication control unit that controls data communications between the monitoring unit and the plurality of remote nodes, according to the communication order and the communication interval, said communication control unit selecting nodes associated with a transmission line to be polled based on a comparison of a first ratio and a second ratio, said first ratio represented by a total number of nodes divided by the number of nodes accommodated by the selected transmission line and said second ratio represented by the total number of nodes involved in the polling divided by the number of nodes polled in each of the transmission lines; and the communication interval determining unit determining the communication interval by dividing a repetition period, required for repetitively executing communications with all of the plurality of remote nodes, by a total number of the plurality of remote nodes, yielding a quotient from which is subtracted a processing time per single node thereby to obtain the communication interval, the communication interval including a communication waiting time.