Patent ID: 7529200

Claim:
A method for providing multi-party connections over a communications network, comprising: establishing a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) connection to a first transport layer group port from an application layer on a first network device, wherein the first transport layer group port and a second transport layer group port are obtained from a session layer application when the first network device initiates a multi-party VoIP connection between the first network device and a plurality of other network devices over the communications network, wherein the session layer application includes a group dispatch session application executing in the session layer that securely tunnels into one or more VoIP applications executing in the application layer using a pre-determined tunneling protocol and wherein the first transport layer group port and a second transport layer group port use a pre-determined transport layer security protocol; sending one or more control data packets to via the first transport layer group port to a network layer; transmitting the one or more control data packets from the network layer to a broadcast destination network address for the multi-party connection thereby establishing a first virtual communications channel over the communications network; receiving voice information on the first network device; changing a status of the second transport layer group port to busy; compressing and digitizing the voice information into a plurality of data packets; sending the plurality of data packets via the second transport layer group port to the network layer; and transmitting the plurality of data packets from the network layer to the broadcast destination network address for the multi-party VoIP connection thereby establishing a second virtual communications channel over the communications network, and thereby establishing the multi-party VoIP connection over the first and second virtual communications channels between the first network device and the plurality of other network devices over the communications network.