Patent ID: 8407288

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for routing communications of a multi-participant conference, each participant using a computing device to participate in the conference, the method comprising: creating a plurality of proximity pools each of which comprises one or more computing devices, wherein each computing device is used by a participant to participate in the conference and wherein the step of creating the proximity pools comprises: (a) a server instructing a candidate first computing device not yet in a proximity pool and a second computing device already in a proximity pool to send packets directly to each other; (b) the server receiving a report from the first and the second computing devices reporting whether the packets were received; (c) placing the candidate first computing device into a proximity pool different from the second computing device's proximity pool, if the received report indicates that the packets were not received; and repeating the process of steps (a)-(c) until all computing devices participating in the multi-participant conference have been placed into proximity pools; and for communications containing audio/video data originated by a computing device in a proximity pool: the server receiving the communications via an upstream connection from said proximity pool to the server; the server not transmitting the communications to other computing devices within said proximity pool; and the server transmitting the communications via a downstream connection from the server to other proximity pool(s).