System and method for providing reservationless third party meeting rooms

• US 7,830,824 B2
• Filed: 10/07/2004
• Issued: 11/09/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/01/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Polycom Incorporated (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Decker, Eran, Boneh, Rami Yochai
• Primary Examiner(s): Tsang; Fan
• Assistant Examiner(s): TESHALE, AKELAW
• Application Number:
  US10/960,337
• Publication Number:
  US 20050058088A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,224 Days
• Field of Search: 370/360, 370260-266, 370/362, 370/259, 370/352, 379/93.21, 379/202.01, 379/158, 379/205.01, 379/203.01, 379/204.01, 455/416, 709/227, 709/228
• US Class Current: 370/262
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1818 Conference organisation arrangements, e.g. handling schedules, setting up parameters needed by nodes to attend a conference, booking network resources, notifying involved parties
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1822 Conducting the conference, e.g. admission, detection, selection or grouping of participants, correlating users to one or more conference sessions, prioritising transmission
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1101 Session protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/4038 with floor control
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/567 Multimedia conference systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/006 Networks other than PSTN/ISDN providing telephone service, e.g. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) , including next generation networks with a packet-switched transport layer H04L65/00 takes precedence; aspects not specific to the type of network H04M3/00; special services in those networks H04M3/42
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/152 Multipoint control units therefor

Abstract

A video and/or audio conferencing system having virtual meeting room services is disclosed. The virtual meeting room services enables a third party to control and manage one or more virtual meeting rooms. Each third party organization may receive one or more dial in numbers, which is associated with a profile that defines the type of the conference that can be conducted. The profile defines the “capabilities” of the virtual meeting room, such as the maximum number of conferees, type of conference, type of endpoints, transcoding and protocol requirement, etc. Each virtual meeting room may have an NID (Numerical Identification) used by the peers along with the dial-in number to join the virtual meeting room.

Claims

1. A method for conducting a conference using a virtual meeting room server managed by a third party, comprising:

allocating a dial-in number to the third party, wherein the dial-in number provides connectivity to a virtual meeting room and is associated with a profile defining capabilities of the virtual meeting room;

receiving calls from callers to the dial-in number to start or join a conference in the virtual meeting room;

in response to each received call, determining at the virtual meeting room server whether the caller can be connected to the virtual meeting room; and

if the caller can be connected, connecting the caller to the virtual meeting room.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining if sufficient resources for the caller are available, and if so, connecting the caller to the virtual meeting room.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the virtual meeting room server is located at a premises of the third party.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising scheduling the virtual meeting room by requesting the virtual meeting room server to allocate the virtual meeting room at a particular time.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein scheduling the virtual meeting room is done via a scheduling application.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein scheduling the virtual meeting room comprises starting the conference immediately on-demand.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein the virtual meeting room server responds to the scheduling by delivering the dial-in number to a scheduling requester.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the dial-in number is further accompanied by an identification number specific to the virtual meeting room associated with the dial-in number.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the virtual meeting room server manages the identification number.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the capabilities of the virtual meeting room comprise one or more capabilities selected from a group consisting of the maximum number of conferees, the type of the conference, the type of endpoints, transcoding requirements, and communication protocol types.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of automatically detecting communication parameters of a connecting terminal that calls the dial-in number.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the communication parameters comprise a connection rate for the connecting terminal and a terminal type for the connecting terminal.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein detecting the communication parameters is accomplished by assessing an on-demand bandwidth.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein detecting the communication parameters is accomplished using a H.221 negotiation mode.

15. A system for conducting a conference using a virtual meeting room server, comprising:

a multipoint control unit;

a virtual meeting room server managed by a third party and coupled to the multipoint control unit via a network;

a storage storing at least one profile defining capabilities of a virtual meeting room;

a plurality of multimedia terminals communicatively coupled to the multipoint control unit, wherein at least one of the multimedia terminals is associated with a moderator terminal that is communicatively coupled to the virtual meeting room server;

wherein the virtual meeting room server is operative to;

(i) receive a request from the moderator terminal to schedule a virtual meeting room, and

(ii) assess whether a particular virtual meeting room is available and notifying the moderator terminal of the same; and

a dial-in allocated to the third party, wherein the dial-in number provides connectivity to the virtual meeting room and is associated with a profile defining capabilities of the virtual meeting room.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the virtual meeting room server is located at a premises of the third party.

17. The system of claim 15, further comprising a scheduling application communicatively coupled to the virtual meeting room server and the moderator terminal, which is configured to manage scheduling of the virtual meeting room.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the moderator terminal is incorporated into its associated multimedia terminal.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein notifying the moderator terminal further comprises notifying the moderator terminal of the dial-in number.

20. The system of claim 15, wherein the virtual meeting room and the dial-in number are associated with the profile defining capabilities of the virtual meeting room.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the association between the dial-in number and the profile is known to the multipoint control unit and to the virtual meeting room server.

22. The system of claim 15, wherein the multipoint control unit is operative:

to receive a call to a dial-in number associated with the virtual meeting room from one of the multimedia terminals, and

to start a decision process with the virtual meeting room server.