At&t Information Systems Inc.

At&t Intellectual Property I, LP

John H Zink

Douglas M Nortz

Robert Sayko

Mark W Altom

Susan Feit

David J Segelstein

A system for providing multicast distribution of incrementally enhanced content is disclosed. The system may include encoding content by utilizing an incremental layer encoding algorithm to generate a low resolution base stream for content and one or more incremental streams for the content. The incremental streams may each have higher resolutions than the base stream. The system may provide the base streams and one or more of the incremental streams to a client device based on available bandwidth and based on the capabilities of the client device. Each of the streams of content may be provided to the client device by having the client device connect to one or more multicast sessions. As the streams are accessed by the client device, the client device may combine and decode the base streams, along with any accessed incremental streams, to obtain the content at an available resolution.

Multicast distribution of incrementally enhanced content

The subject telephone switching provides for the redirection of established data calls to remotely located digital terminals and the reservation of these digital terminals at the time a data call is originated. In particular, a user can originate a data call from a telephone station set, reserve a selected digital terminal which may or may not be colocated with the telephone station set, and at some point in the call, transfer the established data call to the selected digital terminal by operating a data button on the calling telephone station set.

Data call transfer preindication

This data call transfer arrangement enables a calling party to originate a data call from a telephone station set and then transfer the data call to one of a number of predefined digital terminals. This is accomplished by operating the DATA button on the telephone station set corresponding to the selected digital terminal once the data call is established. This action causes the subject telephone switching system to replace the telephone station set on the call appearance with the selected digital terminal.

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Manalapan, NJ, United States of America

John H Zink