Patent ID: 7447741

Claim:
In a home networking environment with a thin client, a method for a computing device with connectivity to the Internet to provide video conferencing, the method comprising: receiving at the computing device from the thin client on the home network a request to conduct an Internet video conference, the thin client being connected to a television and controlling display of images on the television, the thin client having inadequate resources to communicate over a wide area network and conduct video conferencing by itself; setting up an Internet video conference with a conferencing party on the Internet at the computing device according to the request; receiving incoming video conferencing data at the computing device from the conferencing party on the Internet; generating conferencing user interface data at the computing device representing the incoming video conferencing data; packaging the conferencing user interface data at the computing device using a remote desktop protocol (RDP); transmitting the packaged conferencing user interface data representing the incoming video conferencing data from the computing device over the home network to the thin client for display on the television; receiving outgoing video conferencing data from the thin client at the computing device via the home network as USB data included in Internet protocol (IP) packets; extracting the outgoing video conferencing data from the USB data at the computing device; and forwarding the outgoing video conferencing data from the computing device to the video conferencing party on the Internet.