Agent-based multimedia communication system that supports web telephony call model

• US 20030059028A1
• Filed: 09/21/2001
• Published: 03/27/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 09/21/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Lee, Kuo Chu, Yu, Juan, Mo, Shaomin
• Granted Patent: US 7,076,048 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 379/265.01
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/5191 interacting with the Internet
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/12 for working between exchanges having different types of switching equipment, e.g. power-driven and step by step or decimal and non-decimal
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/128 Details of addressing, directories or routing tables

Abstract

An agent-based telephony system is provided for establishing a call between two or more telephony devices interconnected through an automated call dispatch server. The automated call dispatch server includes a call control agent for processing call requests; a call resource management agent in communication with the call control agent for allocating and controlling the resources needed to establish a call between telephony devices; and a resource control agent in communication with the call resource management agent for providing a hardware-dependent interface to the telephony devices.

Claims

1. An agent-based telephony system for establishing a call between two or more telephony devices interconnected through an automated call dispatch server, the automated call dispatch server comprising:

a call control agent for processing call requests;

a call resource management agent in communication with the call control agent for allocating and controlling the resources needed to establish a call between telephony devices; and

a resource control agent in communication with the call resource management agent for providing a hardware-dependent interface to the telephony devices.

2. The agent-based telephony system of claim 1 wherein the call control agent instantiates a call object for each call handled by the automated call dispatch server, such that the call object encapsulates attributes and methods pertaining to the call.

3. The agent-based telephony system of claim 2 wherein the call object is accessible to the call control agent, the call resource management agent, and the resource control agent.

4. The agent-based telephony system of claim 1 wherein the call control agent, the call resource management agent and the resource control agent each execute as a different thread in a multi-threaded environment.

5. The agent-based telephony system of claim 1 wherein the automated call dispatch server defines each call as a different thread in a multithreaded execution environment.

6. The agent-based telephony system of claim 1 wherein the automated call dispatch server is adapted for coupling to a telephone network and at least one of the telephony devices is further defined as a telephone handset.

7. The agent-based telephony system of claim 1 wherein the automated call dispatch server is adapted for coupling to a computer network and at least one of the telephony devices is further defined as an IP-based computing device connected to the computer network.

8. The agent-based telephony system of claim 7 wherein the IP-based computing device is operative to establish a Voice over Internet Protocal (VoIP) call through the use of the automated call dispatch server.

9. The agent-based telephony system of claim 8 further comprises a web-attendant agent for providing user interface functions to control the VoIP call from the IP-based computing device.