Patent ID: 7849191

Claim:
A download system comprising a server to manage data, and a communication terminal to download the data from the server, the communication terminal comprising: reservation candidate acquiring means for transmitting, to the server, a transmission request for transmission of reservation candidate information containing time information indicating at least a start time corresponding to each of a plurality of candidate time zones, all of which are available for allocation of a reservation for download of the data, and for acquiring the reservation candidate information transmitted in response to the request by the server; reservation selecting means for transmitting, to the server, reservation choice information containing, as reservation time information, the time information selected, based on the reservation candidate information acquired by the reservation candidate acquiring means, and for storing a start time corresponding with a selected one of the plurality of time zones, indicated by the reservation time information, as an initiation time of the download; data request transmitting means for transmitting a transmission request for transmission of the data to the server, at the initiation time stored by the reservation selecting means; and data receiving means for receiving the data transmitted by the server in accordance with the transmission request for transmission of the data transmitted by the data request transmitting means; and the server comprising: data storing means for storing the data; reservation information storing means for storing a reservation table in which the reservation for the download is to be allocated to reservation frames within a maximum number at each time to permit simultaneous execution of the download, set based on a load state at each time preliminarily measured; reservation candidate generating means for, in response to the transmission request for the transmission of the reservation candidate information transmitted by the communication terminal, determining the plurality of time zones as candidates available for the download of the data, based on the reservation table stored in the reservation information storing means, for generating the reservation candidate information containing the time information about each of the plurality of time zones, and for transmitting the reservation candidate information to the communication terminal; reservation registering means for receiving the reservation choice information transmitted by the communication terminal, and for registering in the reservation table the reservation for the download at one of the time zones corresponding to the reservation time information included in the reservation choice information; and data transmitting means for transmitting to the communication terminal the data stored in the data storing means, in response to the transmission request for transmission of the data transmitted by the communication terminal.