The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 01, 2001
Filed:
Sep. 25, 1996
Shane D. Mattaway, Boca Raton, FL (US);
Glenn W. Hutton, Miami, FL (US);
Craig B. Strickland, Tamarac, FL (US);
Jan L. Christensen, Plantation, FL (US);
NetSpeak Corporation, Boca Raton, FL (US);
Abstract
A communication protocol for establishing real-time, point-to-point communications between client processes over a computer network includes a directory server apparatus for providing current dynamically assigned Internet Protocol addresses of client process currently connected to the computer network. The client processes can be Internet telephony applications each capable of performing a plurality of predefined functions. In accordance with one aspect of the invention, each client process is required to connect to the server apparatus upon initialization and receives a feature definition identifying which of the plurality of functions the client process is authorized to perform. In another aspect of the invention a callee client process verifies the identity of a caller client process with the directory server and is provided with the feature definition of the caller process to prevent the caller client process from communicating with the callee client process in unauthorized manners. In accordance with yet another aspect of the invention, the feature definition is definable by either the requesting client process or the server.