At&t Bell Laboratories

Avaya Technology LLC

Wayne David Farmer

Albert D Baker

Timothy Ian Ross

Edmund Thomas Burke

Albert Victor Toy

Mary E Ricker

Thomas C Prewitt

James H Apgar

Richard E Henderson

Jerry S Weltman

David B Rucinski

A distributed processing telephone system for providing &ldquo;plug-and-play&rdquo; capability. In particular, a key telephone system comprises a plurality of telephone sets. Each telephone set is coupled to at least one common communications channel, or telephone line, and includes at least one tunable RF modem. There is no key service unit (KSU). That is, the system is KSU-less. Resources of the telephone system are allocated using a peer-to-peer protocol. For example, as each telephone set is newly added to the system, the new telephone set adaptively determines its own allocation of resources, e.g., intercom numbers, etc. During operation, each telephone set requests the appropriate resources from its peers.

&ldquo;Plug and play&rdquo; telephone system

A communication system operates compatibly with a public or private switching network using a Q.931 protocol for basic rate ISDN communications. Communications between a control unit and station terminals of the system use a local protocol which is a modification of the Q.931 protocol. This local protocol includes one segment including the mandatory elements of the Q.931 protocol and a second segment derived by converting the optional elements of the Q.931 protocol into a local codeset which controls the user interface circuits at each station terminal. The local protocol enables call control between the control unit and each station terminal to be managed on a bearer channel basis while call control between the system and the network is managed on a call appearance basis using the standard Q.931 protocol. The local protocol provides for communicating line selection and feature activation commands from the terminal to the control unit, using simple button commands.

Communication system for converting ISDN signaling protocol between

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Matawan, NJ, United States of America

Wayne David Farmer