Patent ID: 7590700

Claim:
An email multicasting device, comprising: a plurality of buffer areas; buffer-related information storage means which stores a buffer area identifier of each of the buffer areas in association with interval data indicating a distribution time interval at which emails queued in the buffer area are sent; client information storage means which stores a client identifier of a client requesting email distribution in association with a plurality of email destinations notified by the client in advance and a buffer area identifier; distribution request reception means which receives mail contents to be multicast as an email and a client identifier; buffer area identifying means which reads out a buffer area identifier associated with the client identifier received by the distribution request reception means from the client information storage means, and identifies a buffer area identified by the buffer area identifier; email creation means which reads out a plurality of email destinations associated with the client identifier received by the distribution request reception means from the client information storage means, and creates a plurality of emails each of which contains the mail contents received by the distribution request reception means and one of the plurality of email destinations; queuing means which queues the plurality of emails created by the email creation means in the buffer area identified by the buffer area identifying means; and email distribution means which reads out interval data associated with the buffer area identifier read out by the buffer area identifying means, from the buffer-related information storage means, and distributes the plurality of emails queued by the queuing means sequentially at time intervals indicated by the interval data.