Patent ID: 8135001

Claim:
An audio gateway, comprising: an analog audio signal interface receiving audio signals from an audio gateway compatible source, and providing output audio signals to the audio gateway compatible source, wherein the audio gateway compatible source and output are compatible with a Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) or Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone interface; an analog to digital (A/D) converter that converts the audio signals to a digital format; an audio compressor that processes the digital audio signals to produce data compressed audio signals; a packetizer that places the compressed audio signals into outgoing data packets; a network interface that places the outgoing data packets onto a data network and receives incoming data packets from the data network; a decompresser that receives the incoming compressed data packets from the data network and processes the compressed incoming data packets to produce decompressed audio data; a digital to analog (D/A) converter that converts the decompressed audio data into an analog audio signal and provides an analog audio signal that is transferred to an output of the analog audio signal interface; one or more processors that: gain access to the network by receipt of network communication parameters from a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server via the network interface; and communicate with an audio server to obtain operational attributes for communication with the audio gateway compatible source via the network interface, wherein at least one of the operational attributes comprise the status of a callfilter mode of operation wherein the audio gateway only answers calls that match an identity defined by call filter attributes.