Patent ID: 8014381

Claim:
A communication system that includes a first communication terminal and a second communication terminal each having multiple network interfaces each capable of being connected to multiple transmission paths, and the communication system executes communication between the first communication terminal and the second communication terminal using any one of the transmission paths, comprising: a means for transmitting information on the multiple network interfaces provided in the second communication terminal; a means for creating a transmission path list that shows combinations of the multiple transmission paths to which the first communication terminal is connected and the multiple transmission paths to which the second communication terminal is connected based on the information on the multiple network interfaces that the first communication terminal provides and the information on the multiple network interfaces that the second communication terminal provides; a means for selecting at least one combination from the transmission path list as a route of data communication between the communication terminals; a means for transmitting the information from the first communication terminal to the transmission path, by designating any one of the network interfaces that the second communication terminal that is a communication counterpart provides as a destination and by designating any one of the network interfaces that the first communication terminal provides as a transmission origin; a means for transmitting the information to the second communication terminal using a transmission path connected to a network interface designated as the destination; a means for transmitting a probe packet to measure the state of the transmission path from the first communication terminal; a means for controlling to transmit to the probe packet to each of multiple combinations being composed of the multiple transmission paths connected to the first communication terminal and the multiple transmission paths connected to the second communication terminal; a means for obtaining the state of the transmission path for each of the combinations of the multiple transmission paths using the probe packet; the second communication terminal comprises: a means for receiving the probe packet transmitted from the first communication terminal; a means for measuring the interval of each arrival of the probe packet received from the first communication terminal; a means for calculating a bottleneck physical bandwidth from the measured arrival interval and the packet size of the probe packet; and a means for reporting the bottleneck physical bandwidth as the information indicating the state of the measured transmission path to the first communication terminal.