Patent ID: 7787155

Claim:
A communications device transmitting/receiving data over a network and making a request for a response to a data transmission from a receiving-end machine, said device comprising: data identifying means for determining whether data to be received over the network is response data to the response request by comparing a size of the data to be received to a predetermined data size; and receipt control means for controlling receipt so as to preferentially receive data identified as the response data by the data identifying means over other data, the data being transmitted/received through a relay device that assigns a serial number to each set of data, and the receipt control means receiving the data in accordance with a ranking indicated by the serial numbers, and when the response data is to be received from the relay device, changes the ranking by way of a request to the relay device from the ranking indicated by the serial numbers, the communications device further comprising: storage means for storing received data; and storage control means for controlling storing to the storage means so that after storing the received data, the storage means is left with empty space needed to store the response data, the response data being ranked higher than other data.