Patent ID: 8379251

Claim:
An image forming system comprising: an image forming apparatus comprising a counter configured to count a number of event occurrences in the image forming apparatus; a data storage device in communication with the counter and configured to store the number of event occurrences as counter data and counter reference sequence data, wherein the counter data includes a plurality of counter values corresponding to a plurality of event types and wherein the counter reference sequence data includes a plurality of counter IDs indicating to which of the plurality of event types the counter values correspond, wherein the counter data is stored as a single Management Information Base (MIB) object and the counter reference sequence data is stored as a single MIB object; and a first communication processor configured to communicate the counter data and the counter reference sequence data with a terminal apparatus via a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP); and a terminal apparatus comprising: a second communication processor configured to receive the counter data and the counter reference sequence data from the image forming apparatus, wherein the second communication processor is configured to obtain the counter data from the image forming apparatus by a single transmission of an SNMP command and the second communication processor is configured to obtain the counter reference sequence data from the image forming apparatus by a single transmission of an SNMP command; and a counter value obtaining unit configured to specify the event type of each of the counter values in the counter data obtained by the single transmission of the SNMP command on the basis of a value of each of elements in the counter reference sequence data and obtain the counter value of the requested event type, wherein the counter IDs of the counter reference sequence data identify one of the plurality of event types as corresponding to one of the plurality of counter values having an index value that is the same as an index value of the counter ID.