Patent ID: 8149704

Claim:
A communication apparatus comprising: network processing units, wherein each network processing unit establishes a logical communication protocol connection and sends and receives a block generated by segmenting transmission data via the logical communication protocol connection; an arrival time estimation unit which estimates, for each block and each of the connections established by said network processing units, an arrival time of the block, from the apparatus, at one of a final reception terminal and a merging apparatus through a network; and a connection selection unit which selects, for each block, a logical communication protocol connection with a shortest arrival time from the connections established by said network processing units on the basis of an estimation result by said arrival time estimation unit, wherein each of said network processing units outputs each block to the network by using the connection selected by said connection selection unit, wherein the arrival time estimation unit includes a first measuring unit which measures a first time after the block is distributed to the connection selected by said connection selection unit until the block is output to the network; and wherein said first measuring unit measures, for each block and each of the plurality of connections, the first time on the basis of: one of: a transmission queue length and a transmission wait time of each connection and an effective throughput of a communication protocol on each connection, wherein the effective throughput is a throughput output from TCP to a protocol adjacent to TCP.