CONTROLLING VOICE COMMUNICATIONS OVER A DATA NETWORK

摘要

Recently, network telephones have been developed that are capable of being connected directly to a data network, such as an IP network. These network telephones are capable of placing telephony calls over a data network. The voice quality offered by such telephones are typically superior to those that can be offered by computer systems, since such network telephones typically include dedicated digital signal processors (DSPs) that perform the data intensive calculations involved in speech processing. However, the existing network telephones do not provide desired multimedia presentation capabilities such as those offered by displays of computer systems. Thus, while networks telephones offer superior speech capabilities, it does have the desired multimedia capabilities. On the other hand, computer systems have superior multimedia capabilities, but they suffer from relatively poor speech processing performance. A need thus exists for an improved method and apparatus for controlling voice communications over data networks. A method and apparatus of communicating over a data network (11) includes providing a user interface (200) in a control system (32, 36) for call control and to display information relating to a call session. The control system (32, 36) communicates one or more control messages (e.g., Session Initiation Protocol or SIP messages) over the data network (11) to establish a call session with a remote device in response to receipt of a request through the user interface. One or more commands are transmitted to a voice device (30, 34) associated with the control system (32, 36) to establish the call session between the voice device (30, 34) and the remote device over the data network (11). A Real-Time Protocol (RTP) link may be established between the voice device (30, 34) and the remote device.