Patent ID: 7933278

Claim:
A network-information-providing device, comprising: a control unit that extracts an object node whose network connection state is most stable by referring to network information of one or more nodes that comprise a network upon receipt of a network-connection request; and a communication unit that transmits address information of the object node to a new node attempting to connect to the network, wherein the network information comprises at least one of the following categories of network information: a memory size of each node; a maximum number of nodes connectable to each node; a number of nodes currently connected to each node; a first weight for each node comprising the difference between the maximum number of connectable nodes and the number of the currently-connected nodes; a first time that indicates a length of time that each node has been connected to the network; a second weight comprising a second time that indicates a length of time each node is expected to maintain connection to the network; a third weight comprising a third time that indicates a length of time each node is expected to disconnect from the network; or at least one time that indicates when the network information was last updated, wherein the control unit: assigns a first priority to a node of the network when the node has fewer nodes currently connected thereto than the maximum number of nodes connectable thereto, assigns a second priority to the node of the network when the first time of the node is less than the second time of the node, assigns a third priority to the node of the network when the first time of the node is greater than the second time of the node but less than the third time of the node, assigns a fourth priority to the node of the network when the first time of the node is greater than the third time of the node, or assigns a fifth priority to the node of the network when the node has more nodes currently connected thereto than the maximum number of nodes connectable thereto.