Patent ID: 7843954

Claim:
A telephone subscriber line device for terminating an analog subscriber telephone line, comprising: a legacy interface for connection to the analog subscriber telephone line; a packet interface for connection to a packet network; a codec connected to said legacy interface for converting between analog and digital format; a processor connected between said codec and said packet interface for performing VoIP media processing and exchanging VoIP packets with the packet network through said packet interface; a cascadable expansion bus connected to said processor for connection to a cascadable expansion bus of at least one like telephone subscriber line device acting as a slave device to permit multiple said telephone subscriber line devices to be connected to a packet network via said packet interface acting as a common port for all said telephone subscriber line devices; and wherein said processor is configurable to broadcast packets received via said common port to said at least one like telephone device acting as a slave device over said expansion bus; and wherein said processor is configurable to control transmission by said at least one like telephone device acting as a slave device of packets for transmission to the packet network via said packet interface acting as a common port.