Unicast-to-multicast communication converting apparatus, method, and computer program product, and monitoring system

摘要

Herein disclosed is a unicast-to-multicast converting apparatus (10) comprising: a unicast network interface (11) for receiving monitoring data including a plurality of UDP unicast data packets; a packet buffer (12) for temporally storing the UDP unicast data packets received from the unicast network interface (11); a converting table storage section (16) for storing conversion key information and a conversion rule table indicative of relationship between source entities and destination entities; a converting judging section (13) for sequentially comparing each of the UDP unicast data packets stored in the packet buffer (12) with the conversion key information stored in the converting table storage section (16) to judge that a UDP unicast data packet is to be multicast when the UDP unicast data packet matches with the conversion key information and determining UDP unicast data packets to be multicast; a converting section (14) for converting the UDP unicast data packets to be multicast determined by the converting judging section (13) into a plurality of UDP multicast data packets each to be multicast to a plurality of destination entities in accordance with the conversion rule table stored in the converting table storage section (16); and a multicast network interface (15) for multicasting the UDP multicast data packets converted by the converting section (14) to the destination entities. The present invention provides a monitoring system, which enables to prevent unnecessary increase in the load applied to IP network on the side of the monitoring camera units and promptly switch the monitoring image to be displayed in the display terminals to enhance the convenience and operability of the monitoring system.