Patent ID: 7424548

Claim:
A method of transmitting content data to a plurality of destination transmitter/receiver units via a network, said method comprising the steps of: providing a database including transfer destination information, said transfer destination information being a list of two or more of the plurality of destination transmitter/receiver units, thereby indicating that the identified destination transmitter/receiver units are scheduled to receive content data, wherein said database includes status flags associated with the identified destination transmitter/receiver units, respectively, each of the status flags specifying whether the associated destination transmitter/receiver unit has yet received the content data, and wherein said content data is not used for routing other data in the network; and transferring said database including the list and said content data via the network to a destination transmitter/receiver unit identified by said transfer destination information, wherein the destination transmitter/receiver unit receiving the transferred database and content data is configured to be a transfer-source transmitter/receiver unit, which performs the following in response to the transfer: analyzes the transfer destination information and the status flags in the received database in order to determine which of the identified destination transmitter/receiver units in the list in the received database have not yet received the content data, and to individually select one of the determined destination transmitter/receiver units to be a transfer-destination transmitter/receiver unit, and transfers the content data and the database including the list and the status flags to the selected transfer-destination transmitter/receiver unit.