Patent ID: 7983247

Claim:
A method for collecting and transmitting contextual information relating to a conversation over a conversation channel between Voice-over-IP (VoIP) clients, comprising: initializing the conversation channel between VoIP clients; during a connection set-up phase exchanging the contextual information between the VoIP clients, wherein the contextual information comprises available media type of each VoIP client and rules of the VoIP clients; before exchanging conversational data packets over the conversation channel, identifying a structural hierarchy for an arrangement of the contextual information that is transmitted between the voice-over-IP clients over the conversation channel; wherein the structural hierarchy is a predefined organizational structure for arranging contextual information to be exchanged between the voice-over-IP clients; from the structural hierarchy, identifying a set of contextual information for enabling enhanced call features between the voice-over-IP clients of a call and for inclusion as part of the conversation of the call between two voice-over-IP clients and defined according to the structural hierarchy; obtaining the identified set of contextual information; and transmitting as part of an establishment of the conversation channel of the voice-over IP call the obtained contextual information represented in accordance with the identified structural hierarchy as contextual data packets; wherein the established conversation channel transmits both conversation data for the voice-over IP call and contextual information.