Patent ID: 8565224

Claim:
A telephone system comprising: a plurality of telephone terminals connected to a communication network; a telephone exchange apparatus configured to make a call connection between the telephone terminals; a plurality of media servers each of configured to perform unicast packet distribution according to an instruction of the telephone exchange apparatus, wherein the unicast packet distribution distributes a media packet including at least one of video, audio, and data to a requesting telephone terminal; and a distribution server configured to perform a part of the function of the media server and distribute an input media packet to the telephone terminals, wherein the telephone exchange apparatus comprises a memory configured to store a connection management table indicating a correspondence relation between a terminal ID, a server ID and codec information, when a call connection related to the unicast packet distribution is established, wherein the terminal ID that identifies a telephone terminal to be connected, the server ID that identifies the media server, and codec information used between the telephone terminal and the media server to correspond to one another, a determination module configured to refer to the connection management table when performing the unicast packet distribution, and determine whether there is a call connection using the same codec information based on a reference result of the connection management table, and a controller configured to switch media packet distribution to a plurality of telephone terminals using the same codec to media packet distribution via the distribution server, and perform media packet distribution the plurality of telephone terminals using the same codec via the distribution server, when there are call connections using the same codec in a plurality of call connections based on the determination result at the determination module.