Patent ID: 7672296

Claim:
A communications system for use with an internet protocol network, wherein student and instructor terminal units are used by a student and an instructor to communicate with each other at least one of transmission and reception, comprising: an information conversion circuit in the student terminal unit for executing in real-time communications generation of voice information by coding for transmission via voice packets to the instructor terminal unit and restoration of voice information received via voice packets from the instructor terminal unit; and an interface circuit in the student terminal unit for executing in real-time communications conversion of music data into music packets for transmission to the instructor terminal unit; and an information conversion circuit in the instructor terminal unit for executing in real time communications generation of voice information by coding for transmission via voice packets to the student terminal unit and restoration of voice information received via voice packets from the student terminal unit, wherein the information conversion circuit in each of the student and instructor terminal units comprises: a communication controller having a relay function for sending information between the student and instructor terminal units and a synchronization function for synchronizing an input or output packets with each other, a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) interface circuit having a VoIP gateway function for modifying input data to have a broader bandwidth than that of an analog telephone service, and an audio codec circuit for sampling and coding a sound collected at a higher sampling rate than that of an audio codec of said VoIP interface circuit, and wherein the communication system uses a frequency signal having a broader bandwidth than that of an analog telephone service, and allows the users to select a transmission mode from real-time and non-real-time transmissions.