Patent ID: 8243629

Claim:
A method, comprising: initiating an ad hoc communication session between a first device of a first participant and a second device of a second participant; deciding, at an initiating device of an initiating participant, to add a third device of a third participant to the communication session to establish an ad hoc conference communication session between the first, second and third participants, and wherein the initiating participant is either the first participant or the second participant that decides to add a third device of a third participant to the communication session, wherein the initiating participant locally mixes communication information streams (CISs) from the other participants in the ad hoc communication session to generate a plurality of conferenced communication information stream (CCISs), and wherein the initiating participant generates a unique CCIS for each of the other participants to receive, where each participant's unique CCIS includes CISs from all other participants but does not include their own CIS; and communicating each unique conferenced communication information stream (CCIS) to each of the other participants in the ad hoc communication session by the initiating participant; determining, at any of the first, second and third devices, resources required to support the ad hoc conference communication session, and whether one or more of resources are outside optimal operating parameters; and when one or more of resources or quality metrics are outside optimal operating parameters, initiating, by any of the devices, a transition from the ad hoc conference communication session to an infrastructure supported conference communication session hosted at a conference server, and then transitioning the first, second and third devices from the ad hoc conference communication session to the infrastructure supported conference communication session in which the first, second and third devices, communicate with one another via the conference server; mixing the communication information streams (CISs) from all of the devices in the infrastructure supported communication session b the conference server to generate a plurality of conferenced communication information stream (CCISs), wherein the mixing generates a unique CCIS for each participant to receive where each participant's unique CCIS includes CISs from all other participants, but does not include their own CIS; and communicating each unique conferenced communication information stream (CCIS) to each one of all the devices by the conference server, wherein the resources being utilized to support the ad hoc conference communication session by the initiating device comprise: resources required to perform local mixing in the initiating device of communication information streams (CISs) generated by the first device, the second device and the third device and to generate the plurality of unique conferenced communication information streams (CCISs) to the other devices.