Patent ID: 8711877

Claim:
A connection control apparatus configured for interconnecting a plurality of terminals, comprising: a communication circuit for transmitting or receiving a connection control signal to or from the terminals; a media format information storage for storing media format information identifying media formats that are usable on the terminals which are to be supplied with media information in media formats converted by a media format converter, and for storing format-specific information specifying parameters that are specific to the stored media format information; and a media format information supplementing circuit operative in response to the connection control signal received from the terminals for referencing said media format information storage to verify a presence of common media format information that may be used by the terminals which are being interconnected, wherein said media format information supplementing circuit supplements the connection control signal, if there is no common media format information, with predetermined media format information, and delivers a resulting connection control signal to said communication circuit, wherein said media format information supplementing circuit supplements the connection control signal not only with the information indicating the media format but also with the media format-specific information, and wherein said media format information supplementing circuit includes a media format information comparator for comparing offered media format information of a connection requesting terminal contained in a connection request signal received from the connection requesting terminal to the media format information of a destination terminal stored in said media format information storage; and a media format information converter, operative in response to said media format information comparator having verified that an item of the media format information of the destination terminal is missing from the offered media format information, for supplementing the connection request signal with the media format information corresponding to the missing item in the offered media format information and with format-specific information that is stored in the media format information storage and that corresponds to the missing item in the offered media format information.