Patent ID: 7158534

Claim:
A network architecture for a video communications system, comprising: a server for receiving login data for a video communications (VC) session from a plurality of participants, each participant being associated with a client machine; a controller configured to control the VC session based on the login data; and a plurality of geographically-dispersed reflectors; the plurality of reflectors each being configured to service one or more client machines based on a network proximity between the reflector and the client machine; the controller being operable to configure one or more of the reflectors based on the login data for the purpose of routing audio/visual (AV) data between two or more client machines; and an audio/visual viewer comprising: a network interface configured to receive audio/visual signals from a plurality of participants; a codec for compressing and decompressing audio/visual signals; a mixer for mixing the audio signals transmitted from a plurality of participants; and a video display for displaying the video signals transmitted from a plurality of participants such that the video display simultaneously displays each visual signal from each participant of the plurality of participants.