Patent ID: 8165022

Claim:
A transmitting/receiving method of selecting a combination of flows and paths when transmitting/receiving one or more flows through one or more paths among a plurality of communication terminals, the plurality of communication terminals including a first communication terminal and a second communication terminal, where each of the plurality of communication terminals has a communication managing portion, the method comprising the steps of: delivering flow information including at least address information and preference information on a network to a first communication managing portion by an application in the first communication terminal; transmitting communication medium information included in the first communication terminal to the second communication terminal based on the flow information of the first communication managing portion of the first communication terminal; delivering flow information including at least address information and preference information on a network to a second communication managing portion by an application in the second communication terminal; generating path information from the communication medium information received from the first communication terminal and communication medium information included in the second communication terminal and transmitting the path information to the first communication terminal by the second communication managing portion of the second communication terminal; generating combinations for mapping flows to paths from the flow information and the path information included in each of the first communication terminal and the second communication terminal and transmitting a score of each combination by the communication managing portion of each of the first communication terminal and the second communication terminal; performing setting such that the first communication managing portion of the first communication terminal selects the combination having a higher score including preference information of the first communication terminal to use a path for each data flow to enable a path to be selected for each flow; and performing setting such that the second communication managing portion of the second communication terminals selects a combination having a higher score including preference information of the second communication terminal to use a path for each data flow to enable a path to be selected for each flow.