Abstract:
A method for sending a paging announcement to all telephones in a roaming telephone network. The roaming telephone network includes first and second local telephone groups each containing a plurality of telephones. The first and second local telephone groups are connected to the Internet through first and second dynamic IP addresses, respectively. A main host is connected to the Internet through a static IP address, and the main host controls voice packet traffic over the Internet between the first and second local telephone groups. The method includes using one telephone in the roaming telephone network to make a paging announcement, transmitting the paging announcement from the paging telephone to the main host, and transmitting the paging announcement from the main host to the first and second local telephone groups for broadcasting the paging announcement to the roaming telephone network.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF INVENTION  
       [0001]     1. Field of the Invention  
         [0002]     The present invention relates to a telephone communication system, and more specifically, to a method of sending a paging announcement over a roaming telephone network created across the Internet by using dynamic Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.  
         [0003]     2. Description of the Prior Art  
         [0004]     The key telephone system (KTS) provides a simple and cost effective way for a small to medium sized business to provide telephone extensions for each of its employees.  
         [0005]     The KTS structure allows a limited number of outside telephone lines connected to a public switched telephone network (PSTN) to be used by any of the phone extensions. In addition, KTS provides a very useful paging announcement function that allows a user to broadcast an announcement to all other KTS extensions. For example, a president of a company can use the paging announcement function to quickly inform all employees near their desks about important news. This paging announcement is immediately sent out, and gets the attention of employees much faster than other company-wide announcements made through other media such as email.  
         [0006]     Unfortunately, the KTS network is a fixed structure, and cannot easily be expanded to include branch offices at other locations. Two branch offices at opposite ends of a country cannot easily be connected through a KTS network. Other telephone networks have been developed that allow remote locations to be connected together. For example, the Internet Protocol Private Branch exchange (IP PBX) and Voice Gateway systems both allow office branches separated by a large distance to be connected together through the Internet. However, neither of these systems allows users to send a system-wide paging announcement, as is possible in a KTS network.  
       SUMMARY OF INVENTION  
       [0007]     It is therefore an objective of the claimed invention to provide a method for sending a paging announcement to all telephones in a roaming telephone network in order to solve the above-mentioned problems.  
         [0008]     According to the claimed invention, a method for sending a paging announcement to all telephones in a roaming telephone network is proposed. The roaming telephone network includes a first local telephone group and a second local telephone group each containing a plurality of telephones. The first and second local telephone groups are respectively connected to the Internet through first and second dynamic IP addresses, and each of the telephones in the first and second local telephone groups are assigned a unique identifier. A main host is connected to the Internet through a static IP address, and the main host controls voice packet traffic over the Internet between the first local telephone group and the second local telephone group. The method includes using one telephone in the roaming telephone network to make a paging announcement, transmitting the paging announcement from the paging telephone to the main host, and transmitting the paging announcement from the main host to the first and second local telephone groups for broadcasting the paging announcement to the roaming telephone network.  
         [0009]     It is an advantage of the claimed invention that a system-wide paging announcement can be broadcast to all telephones that are connected to the roaming telephone network through the Internet. In addition, additional telephones can be connected to the roaming telephone network through a dynamic IP address, making it very easy to expand the roaming telephone network.  
         [0010]     These and other objectives of the claimed invention will no doubt become obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art after reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment, which is illustrated in the various figures and drawings. 
     
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS  
       [0011]      FIG. 1  is a diagram of a roaming telephone network according to a first embodiment of the present invention.  
         [0012]      FIG. 2  is a diagram of a roaming telephone network according to a second embodiment of the present invention.  
         [0013]      FIG. 3  is a diagram of a roaming telephone network according to a third embodiment of the present invention. 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION  
       [0014]     The present invention provides a roaming telephone network and a method of sending paging announcements to each telephone in the roaming telephone network. Please refer to  FIG. 1 .  FIG. 1  is a diagram of a roaming telephone network  10  according to a first embodiment of the present invention. The roaming telephone network  10  allows telephone calls and paging announcements to be made over the Internet  12 . A main host  22  of the roaming telephone network  10  connects to the Internet  12  through an Internet connection  20 . The Internet connection  20  may be an xDSL connection or another suitable broadband Internet connection. The Internet connection  20  provides a static IP address to the main host  22 , which ensures the main host  22  to always be located by other components in the roaming telephone network  10 . An access point  24  is connected to the main host  22  for wirelessly connecting a telephone  26  to the main host  22 . The telephone  26  can communicate with the access point  24  using at least one of the many IEEE 802.11x protocols. In addition, telephones  28  and  30  are directly connected to the main host  22 . The telephones  28  and  30  can directly communicate with the main host  22  through a network cable according to the IEEE 802.3 protocol. The telephones  26 ,  28 , and  30  make up a local telephone network since they are all located at the same geographical location.  
         [0015]     Another local telephone network is connected to the roaming telephone network  10  through Internet connection  40 . Unlike the Internet connection  20 , the Internet connection  40  does not have to provide a static IP address, and a dynamic IP address can be used instead. An IP sharing device  42  is connected to the Internet connection  40 , and is used to share the Internet connection  40  with each device connected to the IP sharing device  42 . An access point  44  is connected to the IP sharing device  42  for wirelessly connecting telephones  46  and  48  to the roaming telephone network  10 .  
         [0016]     Likewise, another local telephone network is connected to the roaming telephone network  10  through Internet connection  60 . The Internet connection  60  also provides a dynamic IP address. An IP sharing device  62  is connected to the Internet connection  60 , and is used to connect telephones  64  and  66  to the roaming telephone network  10 . Telephones  26 ,  28 , and  30  are connected to the main host  22  locally, whereas telephones  46 ,  48 ,  64 , and  66  are connected to the main host  22  remotely through the Internet  12 . The roaming telephone network  10  is said to be roaming because telephones can easily be added to the roaming telephone network  10  through a dynamic IP address anywhere in the world.  
         [0017]     Each of the telephones  26 ,  28 ,  30 ,  46 ,  48 ,  64 , and  66  have a unique identifier. The main host  22  records the unique identifier for each of the telephones  26 ,  28 ,  30 ,  46 ,  48 ,  64 , and  66  for identifying the telephones used in the roaming telephone network  10 .  
         [0018]     According to the first embodiment of the present invention, when one of the telephones in the roaming telephone network  10  sends out a paging announcement, the paging announcement is first sent to the main host  22 .  
         [0019]     The main host  22  then transmits the paging announcement to each of the other telephones in the roaming telephone network  10 . Once the telephones receive the paging announcement from the main host  22 , the telephones broadcast the received paging announcement. To illustrate this method for broadcasting the paging announcement to all telephones in the roaming telephone network  10 , two examples will be given.  
         [0020]     First, assume that the telephone  26  is used to make the paging announcement. When the user of the telephone  26  pushes the paging button on the telephone  26  and makes the paging announcement, the telephone  26  sends the paging announcement to the main host  22  via the access point  24 . Then the main host  22  sends a copy of the paging announcement to each of the remaining telephones  28 ,  30 ,  46 ,  48 ,  64 , and  66  in the roaming telephone network  10 .  
         [0021]     As a second example, suppose that the telephone  64  is used to make the paging announcement. When the user of the telephone  64  pushes the paging button on the telephone  64  and makes the paging announcement, the telephone  64  sends the paging announcement to the main host  22  via the Internet  12 . The main host  22  then sends a copy of the paging announcement to each of the remaining telephones  26 ,  28 ,  30 ,  46 ,  48 , and  66  in the roaming telephone network  10 .  
         [0022]     In the first embodiment of the present invention, the main host  22  sends a copy of the paging announcement to each individual telephone in the roaming telephone network  10  except for the telephone that made the paging announcement. As the number of telephones in the roaming telephone network  10  increases, the number of copies of the paging announcement that the main host  22  has to send out increases as well. Similarly, if one of the local telephone networks in the roaming telephone network  10  contains a vast number of telephones, the main host  22  will have to send a copy of the paging announcement to each of those telephones in the same local telephone network. For these situations, it may be advantageous to install a local host in each of the local telephone networks instead of relying only on the main host  22  to send out a copy of the paging announcement to each telephone in the roaming telephone network  10 .  
         [0023]     Please refer to  FIG. 2 .  FIG. 2  is a diagram of a roaming telephone network  100  according to a second embodiment of the present invention. In the roaming telephone network  100 , a local host  50  is added to the local telephone network connected to the roaming telephone network  100  through the Internet connection  40 . Likewise, a local host  70  is added to the local telephone network connected to the roaming telephone network  100  through the Internet connection  60 . Instead of sending a copy of the paging announcement to each individual telephone in remote telephone networks, the main host  22  instead only needs to send one copy to each of the local hosts  50  and  70 . Thus, the topology of the roaming telephone network  100  using the local hosts  50  and  70  can drastically reduce the number of copies of the paging announcement that the main host  22  needs to send out over the Internet  12 . To better illustrate the method in which the roaming telephone network  100  operates, the same two examples given above will be repeated with the relevant portions changed.  
         [0024]     As a first example, assume that the telephone  26  is used to make the paging announcement. When the user of the telephone  26  pushes the paging button on the telephone  26  and makes the paging announcement, the telephone  26  sends the paging announcement to the main host  22  via the access point  24 . Then the main host  22  sends a copy of the paging announcement to each of the telephones  28  and  30  in the same local telephone network as the main host  22 . At the same time, the main host  22  sends a copy of the paging announcement to each of the local hosts  50  and  70 . The local host  50  sends a copy of the paging announcement to each of the telephones  46  and  48  via the access point  44 . The local host  70  also sends a copy of the paging announcement to each of the telephones  64  and  66  through the IP sharing device  62 .  
         [0025]     As a second example, suppose that the telephone  64  is used to make the paging announcement. When the user of the telephone  64  pushes the paging button on the telephone  64  and makes the paging announcement, the telephone  64  sends the paging announcement to the main host  22  via the Internet  12 . The main host  22  then sends a copy of the paging announcement to each of the telephones  26 ,  28 , and  30  in the same local telephone network as the main host  22 . At the same time, the main host  22  sends a copy of the paging announcement to each of the local hosts  50  and  70 . The local host  50  sends a copy of the paging announcement to each of the telephones  46  and  48  through the access point  44 , and the local host  70  sends a copy of the paging announcement to the telephone  66  through the IP sharing device  62 .  
         [0026]     With topology of the roaming telephone network  100  according to the second embodiment of the present invention, the local hosts  50  and  70  send copies of the paging announcement to each telephone in their respective local telephone networks. Therefore, the main host  22  only needs to send a copy of the paging announcement to each local host  50  and  70  in the roaming telephone network  100  instead of sending a copy of the paging announcement to each telephone in the roaming telephone network  100 .  
         [0027]     Please refer to  FIG. 3 .  FIG. 3  is a diagram of a roaming telephone network  110  according to a third embodiment of the present invention. The roaming telephone network  110  of  FIG. 3  is very similar to the roaming telephone network  100  of  FIG. 2  except for the way in which telephones are connected to the local hosts  50  and  70 . As shown in  FIG. 3 , the telephones  46  and  48  are each directly connected to the local host  50 , and the telephones  64  and  66  are each directly connected to the local host  70 . When the local host  50  sends a copy of the paging announcement to the telephones  46  and  48 , the local host  50  sends the copy of the paging announcement directly to each of the telephones  46  and  48  instead of sending it through the access point  44 , as was done in the roaming telephone network  100  of  FIG. 2 . In the same way, the local host  70  sends the copy of the paging announcement directly to each of the telephones  64  and  66  since the telephones  64  and  66  are directly connected to the local host  70 . Other than this, the operation of the roaming telephone network  110  is the same as the roaming telephone network  100  of the second embodiment of the present invention.  
         [0028]     In summary, the present invention roaming telephone network is offers the ability to broadcast paging announcements throughout the entire roaming telephone network. If one of the telephones in the roaming telephone network is used to make a paging announcement, the roaming telephone network will broadcast the paging announcement on all other telephones in the roaming telephone network. The roaming telephone network is not restricted to a small geographical location as is the KTS network of the prior art. Therefore, additional telephones can be connected to the roaming telephone network through a dynamic IP address, making it very easy to expand the roaming telephone network.  
         [0029]     Those skilled in the art will readily observe that numerous modifications and alterations of the device may be made while retaining the teachings of the invention. Accordingly, the above disclosure should be construed as limited only by the metes and bounds of the appended claims.