Granted Patent B1

US 7,460,533 · App. 10/002,832 · Granted Dec 2, 2008

Abstract

Claims (36)

1. A system of multicasting announcements, the system comprising:

a caller device;

a proxy coupled to the caller device;

an announcement server, the announcement server coupled to the proxy, the announcement server determining when selected announcements will be played to a plurality of addresses in a memory and broadcasting the selected announcements to the addresses in the memory, the announcement server communicating the plurality of addresses to the proxy;

wherein the proxy communicates an address of the plurality of addresses to the caller device; and

wherein the caller device retrieves an announcement from the address.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the announcement received by the caller device is a tone.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the caller device switches from receiving a first announcement by listening on a first multicast address to receiving a second announcement of the plurality of announcements by listening on a second multicast address received from the proxy.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the plurality of announcements transmitted by the announcement server are transmitted according to the Real Time Protocol.

5. A method of multicasting announcements, the method comprising:

establishing a plurality of multicast addresses;

forming a plurality of announcements;

choosing a first multicast address from the plurality of multicast addresses;

choosing a first announcement from the plurality of announcements;

transmitting the first multicast address to a caller device via a proxy;

determining when the first announcement will be transmitted to the first multicast address; and

transmitting the first announcement to the first multicast address.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising:

choosing a second multicast address from the plurality of multicast addresses;

choosing a second announcement from the plurality of announcements;

transmitting the second multicast address to the caller device via a proxy;

determining when the second announcement will be transmitted to the second multicast address;

transmitting the second announcement to the second multicast address.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein each of the announcements is a tone.

8. An announcement server comprising:

means for initiating the multicasting of announcements;

means for determining a plurality of addresses to multicast the announcements;

means for determining when the announcements will be transmitted to the addresses;

means for communicating the plurality of addresses to a proxy, the proxy communicating the plurality of addresses to a caller device; and

means for multicasting the announcements to the plurality of addresses.

9. The announcement server of claim 8 wherein means for multicasting the announcements to the plurality of addresses includes means for continuously multicasting the announcements to the plurality of addresses.

10. The announcement server of claim 8 , further comprising means for a caller device to switch between receiving two announcements.

11. The announcement server of claim 10 further comprising means for communicating an address to a device, and means for retrieving an announcement from the address.

12. The announcement server of claim 8 wherein the announcements are tones.

13. The announcement server of claim 12 wherein a tone used for announcements is a call-ringing tone.

14. The announcement server of claim 12 wherein a tone used for announcements is a call-routing tone.

Assignments (8)