Intel Corporation

Gregory Gates

Gunner D Danneels

Russell Downing

Philip R Lantz

Rama R Prasad

Robert A Schlesinger

A computer system with an operating system and a data-processing system running on a host processor, and a receiver. The receiver sends interrupt signals to the operating system after the receiver has received data signals. The operating system establishes interrupt times and passes the interrupt signals to the data-processing system. The data-processing system accesses the data signals from the receiver and only partially processes the data signals during the interrupt times. The operating system also receives clock interrupt signals, which it passes on to the data-processing system. The data-processing system completes the processing of the data signals during the clock interrupt times that the operating system establishes in response to the clock interrupt signals.

Interrupt-time processing of received signals

The transports available in a local computer system for communicating with a remote computer system are automatically determined at either install time or run time. At install time, a list of transports supported by the local computer system is used to determine which supported transports are actually installed in the local computer system and the media dependent modules (MDMs) that correspond to those installed transports. At run time, a list of the installed transports and corresponding MDMs is used to determine which installed transports (and corresponding MDMs) can actually be used for an impending communications session with the remote computer system.

Automatic transport detection by attempting to establish communication

Signals (e.g., for audio/video conferencing) are divided into data packets for transmission from a local node to a remote node. The transmission of the data packets is delayed to transmit then at intervals to avoid overloading the remote node with data packets that it does not have the bandwidth to receive and/or process. The invention helps prevent the remote node from dropping data packets which may otherwise occur when transmitting audio and/or video signals during a session (e.g., an audio/video conferencing session).

Delayed transmission of data packets over networks

A computer-based conferencing system capable of selectively conferencing with a remote node over two or more different transports. A host processor controls the generation of local conferencing signals for transmission to the remote node over either a first transport or a second transport. The host processor also controls the processing of remote conferencing signals received from the remote node over either the first transport or the second transport. In a preferred embodiment, the first transport is an ISDN network and the second transport is a LAN network. In one embodiment, the computer system has a combined audio/ISDN board, a video board, and a LAN card. In an alternative embodiment, the computer system has a combined audio/video board, an ISDN board, and a LAN card.

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Beaverton, OR, United States of America

Gregory Gates