METHOD AND APPARATUS OF DATA TRANSFER CONTROLLING DATA TRANSFER AMONG A PLURALITY OF EQUIPMENTS CONNECTED TO A NETWORK AND MEDIUM RECORDING THE PROGRAM THEREOF

A data transfer apparatus includes an attribute collecting unit collecting attribute of data managed by an equipment connected to a network, a transfer control unit selecting a method of data transfer based on the attribute information of data collected by the attribute collecting unit, a data receiving unit receiving data by the method of transfer selected by the transfer control unit, and a data transmitting unit transmitting data by the method of transfer selected by the transfer control unit. As the transfer control unit selects the method of data transfer based on the data attribute information collected by the attribute collecting unit, it becomes possible for a user or an application program to receive data by the same operation.