Patent ID: 8773982

Claim:
A transmitting terminal for use in a communication system in which the transmitting terminal estimates a bandwidth of a network and controls a transmission rate of data, and a plurality of receiving terminals, each of which copies the data transmitted from the transmitting terminal and transfers the copied data to a receiving terminal downstream, are connected to each other in a tree structure such that the transmitting terminal is configured as a root on the network and the plurality of receiving terminals are configured as leaves on the network, wherein the transmitting terminal is configured to: receive a receiver report including a packet loss rate and a round trip time between the transmitting terminal and each of the receiving terminals, which is transmitted from each of the plurality of receiving terminals; select a target terminal for estimating the bandwidth of the network from the plurality of receiving terminals, on the basis of information on a distribution tree storage section, the distribution tree storage section comprising information regarding the transmitting terminal and the plurality of receiving terminals, and a packet loss rate included in the receiver report transmitted from each of the plurality of receiving terminals, estimate the bandwidth of the network on the basis of the packet loss rate and the round trip time included in the receiver report transmitted from the target terminal, and separate the respective receiving terminals into groups on the basis of the packet loss rates included in the receiver reports transmitted from the plurality of receiving terminals respectively, and select the target terminal from the group having the receiving terminal with highest packet loss rate, wherein the transmitting terminal is further configured to determine whether or not there is a parent-child relationship among the receiving terminals within the group having the receiving terminal with the highest packet loss rate, wherein if there is no parent-child relationship, the transmitting terminal is configured to select the receiving terminal having the highest packet loss rate as the target terminal; and wherein if there is a parent-child relationship, the transmitting terminal is configured to select the receiving terminal which is the parent terminal of the group as the target terminal.