Dataconferencing method, appliance, and system

摘要

Geographically distributed conference sites each have a telephone receiver and a dataconferencing appliance 112, 122 connected to a shared voice call network 146. Each site also has a display device 124 for displaying images comprised of image data produced by an image source. The dataconferencing appliance 112, 122 is connected to a data network 132 that links the sites independently of the voice call network 146. To initiate a dataconference session between the sites, a voice call session is first established between the telephone receivers via the voice call network 146. An access negotiation procedure implemented in software or hardware of the dataconferencing appliance 112, 122 is then manually initiated to identify a network device access code and communicate it to at least a second one of the sites within the voice call session. The network device access code is used to establish a data communication session via the data network 132 for convenient transmission of image data between the sites.