Patent ID: 8229087

Claim:
A relay apparatus of the present invention for relaying communication between a plurality of wireless terminals and a wired network, includes: a wireless communication part for enabling wireless communication between the plurality of wireless terminals and the relay apparatus; a wired network connecting part for connecting the relay apparatus and the wired network including a communication control apparatus that controls starting and ending of communication between the wireless terminals; a priority data recording part for recording communication identification data that represents a prioritized communication to be relayed by priority and required bandwidth data that represents a quantity of the transport bandwidth required by the prioritized communication; a priority control part for relaying the prioritized communication by priority compared with the others based on the communication identification data recorded in the priority data recording part; a request receiving part for receiving, from the wireless terminal, a request message that contains communication identification data representing a starting communication and multimedia type data representing one or more multimedia types of the streaming communication contained within the starting communication; a selecting part for selecting at least one multimedia type of the streaming communication contained within the starting communication, referring the required bandwidth data recorded in the priority data recording part and data representing bandwidth required for relaying each streaming communication calculated by the multimedia type data; an updating part for updating the data which is recorded in the priority data recording part, newly adding data representing a quantity of bandwidth for relaying the streaming communication whose multimedia type is selected by the selecting part and the communication identification data representing a starting communication; a responding part for transmitting data that represents the streaming communication to be relayed by priority, selected by the selecting part, to the communication control apparatus, as a response to the request message, wherein the selecting part selects the multimedia type of the each streaming communication contained within the starting communication not to exceed a predetermined upper limit of the total value of bandwidth required for relaying the prioritized communication even if adding the required bandwidth for relaying the starting communication.