Patent ID: 7657106

Claim:
A switching device that selectively switches connections to a selected terminal among a plurality of terminals connected to computers, and can be remote-controlled by remote-access computers over a network, comprising: a network interface circuit to be connected to the network; an image processing unit, comprising: switching circuits switching between image signals outputted from the computers responsive to a remote control signal; and image compression circuits that simultaneously compress the image signals output from the computers via the selected terminals; a controller that changes compression methods or compression rates to be respectively used at the image compression circuits, in accordance with a congestion level of the network; and a circuit that causes keyboard signals and mouse signals supplied via the network to said selected terminals to bypass the image compression circuits, such that the keyboard and mouse signals are not compressed, while the image signals supplied from the selected terminals to be sent to the network are simultaneously compressed by corresponding ones of the image compression circuits, compressed image signals being simultaneously sent to the remote-access computers over the network.