Patent ID: 8452892

Claim:
A scheduling apparatus for sending queries to communication modules in buildings and receiving facility information measured at monitor-control points from the communication modules, comprising: a storage unit configured to store a network address of each communication module, a waiting time to receive the facility information from each communication module after sending a query, an average size of the facility information, and a connection relationship between each communication module and the monitor-control points; a receiving unit configured to receive a service request indicating at least one monitor-control point; a generation unit configured to generate queries by referring to the storage unit, each query including the network address of a communication module connected with a monitor-control point indicated by the service request, and to decide a priority of each query based on the waiting time corresponding to the communication module; and a processing unit configured to add each query to a first send queue or a second send queue based on the priority, to create a predicted receive window based on the waiting time and the average size corresponding to the communication module of the network address included in the each query, and to send queries from the first send queue and queries from the second send queue based on the predicted receive window, a timing to send from the first send queue being earlier than a timing to send from the second send queue.