Patent ID: 7233605

Claim:
A packet-based telephony system, including: a transmitting gateway including a voice encoder that converts a data stream having voice data and non-voice signaling data into voice packets without identifying whether data in the data stream is voice data or non-voice signaling data and a signal detector that identifies non-voice signaling data in the data stream, converts the signaling data into signaling packets, where the transmitting gateway is configured to transmit the voice and non-voice signaling packets; and a receiving gateway including a voice decoder that decodes the voice packets and outputs the decoded voice packets as voice signals and a packet identifier that discards the voice packets that include signaling data and instead outputs signaling data from corresponding signaling packets; where the voice encoder and the signal detector are connected and configured to operate in parallel, the voice encoder to encode the data stream into voice packets regardless of whether the data stream contains voice data or signaling data; and where a signaling detector is configured to decode only non-voice signaling data in the data stream.