Patent ID: 7564577

Claim:
In a FAX transmission system composed of a plurality of first FAX gateways having a first function of receiving FAX data from a sending FAX machine over a telephone network and forwarding the FAX data over a communication network other than the telephone network, and a plurality of second FAX gateways having a second function of receiving FAX data over the communication network and forwarding the FAX data to a receiving FAX machine over the telephone network, at least one of the first FAX gateways having the first function comprises: a device information acquiring unit operable to acquire, for each second FAX gateway having the second function, device information that includes (i) an address of that second FAX gateway on the communication network and (ii) an address of that second FAX gateway on the telephone network or information for acquiring the telephone network address; a device information memory; a device information storing unit operable to store the acquired device information to the device information memory; a forwarding unit operable to select one of the second FAX gateways having the second function as a forward destination based on the device information, and forward the FAX data to the selected forward destination; a device information transmitting unit operable to transmit the device information to at least one other of the first FAX gateways having the first function; and a judging unit operable, before the device information storing unit stores the acquired device information, to judge whether the device information is already stored in the device information memory, wherein the device information transmitting unit performs the transmission when the judging unit judges the device information is not yet stored.