Patent ID: 8032353

Claim:
A method of managing communications bridged, via a communications network, between a host computer and a peripheral of a remote computer, the method comprising: executing, within the host computer, a device driver for the peripheral to produce a communication for the peripheral that requires a response within a time limit, wherein the time limit is less than a response latency between the host computer and the remote computer via the communications network; and executing, within the host computer, an emulation of the peripheral to generate the response such that the response is received by the device driver within the time limit, wherein (i) the peripheral is an audio codec, (ii) the device driver is an industry standard audio driver included with an industry standard operating system, (iii) executing the emulation comprises presenting, via an audio bus driver, an audio controller interface to the industry standard audio driver, (iv) the emulation is an audio codec emulation, (v) executing the emulation further comprises producing configuration data for the industry standard audio driver, the configuration data based on an available bandwidth of the communications network, (vi) executing the industry standard audio driver comprises communicating audio data, via the communications network, with the peripheral by adjusting, based on the configuration data, at least one of a data rate of the audio data, a sample size of the audio data, a number of channels for the audio data, or a format of the audio data, (vii) the host computer is one of a plurality of virtual machines running on a virtualized computer, and (viii) the communication network is an Internet Protocol (IP) network.