Patent ID: 7757122

Claim:
A remote maintenance system to report fault information to a maintenance center by an electronic mail through the internet when a fault is detected by a surveillance unit mounted in a user device, comprising: a connect confirmation unit to prepare connect confirmation mails of a plurality of patterns different in mail content including a mail size and transmit all the prepared mails sequentially to the maintenance center at a predetermined time before detecting the fault; and a diagnosis unit to diagnose the mail transmission environment including a limit size of the user device from a reception number of connect confirmation mails received from the user device within a predetermined time-out period after a first connect confirmation mail is received and transmit a diagnosis result to the user device or an arbitrary address by an electronic mail, wherein the connect confirmation unit is provided in the user device and the diagnosis unit is provided in the maintenance center, and the connect confirmation unit transmits the connect confirmation mail prior to the start of the system operation.