Patent ID: 7715372

Claim:
A method comprising: activating silence suppression for a transmission over a communications network; receiving, from the user, a selection of a type of comfort signal to be added to the transmission, the type of comfort signal being one of noise, tone, or music, the comfort signal having a frequency between approximately 330 Hz and 3.4 KHz; presenting, to the user, a user interface listing available sounds matching the selected type of comfort signal, the list of available sounds representing a database storing the sounds; receiving, from the user via the user interface, a request for a comfort signal from either the list of available sounds, or a user-defined comfort signal; determining whether the requested comfort signal is currently stored in the database, and storing the requested comfort signal in the database upon determining that the requested comfort signal is not stored in the database; monitoring a packet transmission to detect periods of silence; and adapting the monitored packet transmission by adding the requested comfort signal to the transmission during periods of silence, as background noise, or during periods of silence and as background noise.