Patent ID: 7046780

Claim:
A method for allocating buffers within a conferencing system, comprising the steps of: (1) receiving a packet from a speaker participating in a conference, wherein said speaker is not currently designated as an active speaker; (2) testing said packet to determine whether said speaker should be designated as an active speaker; (3) discarding the packet when the determination of step (2) is negative; and (4) performing the following steps when the determination of step (2) is positive: (a) determining whether there is an unallocated buffer from among a set of p active speaker buffers; (b) storing said packet in said unallocated buffer when the determination of step (a) is positive; (c) identifying, when the determination of step (a) is negative, a buffer from said set of p active speaker buffers that can be reassigned and storing said packet in said identified buffer.