Patent ID: 7701882

Claim:
A method of dynamically configuring and optimizing a multimedia conference session, said method comprising: providing a plurality of services to be used in a multimedia conference session, wherein each of the plurality of services is hosted by and independently executable through at least one service endpoint in a communications network; enabling a plurality of users to participate in the multimedia conference session, wherein each user participates in the conference session through at least one respective user endpoint in the communications network, wherein each of the at least one respective user endpoints is hosted by and independently executable through at least one service endpoint, wherein the at least one service endpoint is configurable as an authentication service and a presence service such that the at least one service endpoint is able to authenticate and publish a presence of each user endpoint hosted by and independently executable through the at least one service endpoint; receiving a request to initiate the multimedia conference session; in response to the session initiation request, establishing the multimedia conference session via the steps of: (a) identifying respective user endpoints for each of the plurality of users participating in the session; (b) identifying and verifying a subset of services selected from the plurality of the services for the conference session and respective service endpoints associated with each of the subset of services in the communications network; and (c) defining a message routing mesh comprising all of the user endpoints and service endpoints identified in (a) and (b); wherein resources for establishing the multimedia conference are distributed among the plurality of service endpoints, wherein the resources are a function of a conference logging service that is located via a presence service, wherein the conference logging service publishes its presence with the presence service, wherein the presence service removes a pending presence entry of the conference logging service and replaces it with an actual presence entry; routing messages between any of the user and service endpoints in the message routing mesh during real-time performance of the conference session; updating the multimedia conference session with a newly selected service from the plurality of the services; and in response to the newly selected service, identifying a particular service endpoint associated with the newly selected service and including the particular service endpoint into the message routing mesh.