Patent ID: 8886698

Claim:
A method of monitoring the condition of an electronic device from a plurality of computers, comprising: performing communication with said plurality of computers; storing a communication address of said electronic device and a transmission destination table composed of a plurality of entries; and controlling operation of said electronic device, wherein the plurality of entries has an index number, a transmission destination communication address and a status indicating whether rewriting of the entry is possible, wherein, when said electronic device is started up, rebooted or initialized or when the communication address of said electronic device is chanced after said electronic device was started up, rebooted or initialized last, the entries of said transmission destination table are initialized to set the transmission destination addresses of the entries to predetermined initial addresses, receiving a first request from a first computer to change the transmission destination address of a particular entry in plurality of entries in the transmission destination table to a first address, wherein the particular entry has a status indicator that indicates whether rewriting of the transmission destination address is possible; changing the transmission designation address of the particular entry to the first address; transmitting a first response when the changing of the transmission designation address of the particular entry to the first address ended normally; subsequently receiving a second request from a second computer to change the transmission destination address of the particular entry to a second address different from the first address; and transmitting a second response to indicate an error in response to the second request including when the transmission destination address in the second request is a valid transmission destination address.