Patent ID: 7460523

Claim:
A modem for use in a network, the modem being suited for interfacing to telephone subscriber equipment and providing voice functionality, the modem comprising: a subscriber line interface for interfacing to the telephone subscriber equipment; an encoder/decoder coupled to the subscriber line interface; a voice interface circuit coupled to the encoder/decoder; a communication network interface coupled to the voice interface circuit; the voice interface circuit being operable to receive digital signals representative of audio signals generated by the telephone subscriber equipment, format the digital signals into voice packets, and provide the voice packets to the communication network interface; the voice interface circuit being operable to receive voice packets representative of audio signals from the communication network interface, remove formatting from the voice packets to create digital signals and provide the digital signals to the encoder/decoder; the communication network interface operable to transmit and receive voice packets over the communication network without applying and removing network stack formatting; whereby the modem does not require a network stack; the modem further comprising a local network interface coupled to the communication network interface, and wherein the communication network interface is operable to: transmit and receive data packets over the communication network without the application and removal of applying and removing network stack formatting; provide data packets received from the communication network to the local network interface; and provide data packets received from the local network interface to the communication network.