Patent ID: 7839990

Claim:
A method of generating a ring back tone at a first terminal in communication with a second terminal, wherein the first terminal communicates over a first network implemented over voice over internet protocol (VOIP), and wherein the second terminal communicates over a second network connected to the first network, the method comprising: identifying type of the second network over which the second terminal communicates to determine whether the second network expects to receive a ring back tone, in response to an attempt by the second terminal to establish a connection between the first terminal and the second terminal over both the first and second networks; if the type of the second network over which the second terminal communicates is a PSTN, generating ring back tone data at the first terminal independent of any functions available at a public switched telephone network (PSTN) switchboard or an access gateway for generating the ring back tone; storing the generated ring back tone data in a buffer of the first terminal; and inserting the ring back tone data into a response message forwarded from the first terminal to the second terminal after reading out the ring back tone data from the buffer; wherein the ring back tone data is inserted into the response message according to a first-in first-out method, wherein the first network and the second network are connected by way of a trunk gateway, wherein the response message is transmitted to the second terminal through a port allocated for enabling communication between the first terminal and the second terminal by the trunk gateway during a call setup process initiated by the second terminal, wherein the second terminal receives the response message and locally generates a ring back tone by using the ring back tone data included in the response message, such that the second terminal generates the ring back tone by way of replaying the ring back tone data in the response message forwarded from the first terminal, without relying on functionalities within the first network or the second network to generate the ring back tone.