Patent ID: 7975054

Claim:
A network device comprising: a storage medium including instructions accessed by a CPU or MPU and thereby implementing the following units, a communication management unit that manages a plurality of types of communication middleware; an obtaining unit that obtains capability information of a device existing on a network; a first determination unit that determines which communication middleware of the plurality of types of communication middleware of the communication management unit is to be activated/inactivated, on the basis of the capability information obtained by the obtaining unit; a communication unit that executes communication between devices across the network by using communication middleware found to be activated by the first determination unit; a second determination unit that determines whether a first command in a protocol used by the communication middleware determined to be activated by the first determination unit and transmitted by the communication unit to a first device of the devices is accepted by the first device or not; a collection unit that collects a second command which is received by the communication unit and related to the first command in the protocol used by the communication middleware determined to be activated by the first determination unit, in a case where the first command in the protocol used by the communication middleware determined to be activated by the first determination unit is not accepted by the device; a detecting unit that detects a difference in case of character between character strings indicating the first command that was not accepted by the first device and the second command a protocol correction unit that corrects communication middleware of the communication management unit for communicating with the first device in accordance with the difference detected by the detection unit; and a control unit that controls the communication unit to send to the first device a command generated using the communication middleware corrected by the protocol correction unit.