To stably transmit packets while suppressing the increase of a delay amount.

A jitter information acquisition part 254 acquires jitter information such as the dispersion of an average bit rate and an encoding rate supplied from an encoding part 111 and supplies it to a target encoding rate calculation part 256. A maximum transmission rate information acquisition part 255 acquires maximum transmission rate information supplied from a transmission rate control part 121 and supplies it to the target encoding rate calculation part 256. The target encoding rate calculation part 256 calculates a target encoding rate on the basis of the jitter information supplied from the jitter information acquisition part 254 and the maximum transmission rate information supplied from the maximum transmission rate information acquisition part 255. This invention is applicable to a transmitter for instance.