Systems and methods for distributed conferencing
First Claim
1. For use in a distributed conferencing system to provide local meeting contents to remote participants from a plurality of authorized source units, each source unit having a respective source unit IP address, a method comprising:
- transmitting meeting announcement data to an announcement multicast IP address, the meeting announcement data specifying data, for a particular meeting, that includes a meeting multicast group IP address for a meeting multicast group and IP addresses for each of the authorized source units involved in the meeting; and
in logic circuitry at each of the plurality of authorized source units, performing the steps ofsearching the meeting announcement data for the IP address of the authorized source unit,in response to the search, retrieving a portion of the meeting data that identifies the source unit,in response to the retrieved meeting data, generating media content responsive to and representative of respective portions of meeting contents for the meeting,in response to the generated media content, developing one or more data streams, each data stream being a separately-decodable real-time representation of at least a portion of the generated media content, andtransmitting the one or more data streams to the meeting multicast group IP address in the retrieved meeting data.
5 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Distributed conferencing systems and methods provide local meeting contents to remote participants. In accordance with various example embodiments, a plurality of authorized source units generate media content responsive to and representative of respective content for a meeting. In response to the generated media content, one or more data streams are developed at each authorized source, each stream being a separately-decodable real-time representation of at least a portion of the media content generated at the respective authorized source. The separate data streams are transmitted by each authorized source to a common multicast IP group address for retrieval/access by remote participants.
-
Citations
16 Claims
-
1. For use in a distributed conferencing system to provide local meeting contents to remote participants from a plurality of authorized source units, each source unit having a respective source unit IP address, a method comprising:
-
transmitting meeting announcement data to an announcement multicast IP address, the meeting announcement data specifying data, for a particular meeting, that includes a meeting multicast group IP address for a meeting multicast group and IP addresses for each of the authorized source units involved in the meeting; and in logic circuitry at each of the plurality of authorized source units, performing the steps of searching the meeting announcement data for the IP address of the authorized source unit, in response to the search, retrieving a portion of the meeting data that identifies the source unit, in response to the retrieved meeting data, generating media content responsive to and representative of respective portions of meeting contents for the meeting, in response to the generated media content, developing one or more data streams, each data stream being a separately-decodable real-time representation of at least a portion of the generated media content, and transmitting the one or more data streams to the meeting multicast group IP address in the retrieved meeting data. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 14)
-
-
10. A distributed conferencing system for providing local meeting contents to remote participants, the system comprising:
-
an announcement unit for periodically transmitting meeting announcement data for at least one meeting to an announcement multicast IP address, the meeting announcement data for each meeting including identification data for each of a plurality of circuit-based source units, date and time information for the meeting, and a meeting multicast group IP address; and a plurality of circuit-based source units, each source unit configured to search the announcement multicast IP address for a meeting announcement containing the identification data for the source unit, for a meeting announcement containing the source unit'"'"'s identification data, retrieve meeting announcement data including the multicast group IP address and the date and time for the meeting, according to the meeting announcement data, generate media content responsive to and representative of respective portions of the meeting contents, in response to the generated media content, develop at least one data stream, each data stream being a separately decodable real-time representation of at least a portion of the media content generated at the source unit, and transmit the at least one data stream to the meeting multicast group IP address in the retrieved meeting announcement data. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 15, 16)
-
Specification