Patent ID: 7085243

Claim:
A method for providing reservationless conferences for a plurality of participants, the method comprising: creating a conference profile for a reservationless conference without allocating resources for the reservationless conference, the conference profile identifying connection parameters comprising a conference maximum bit rate; and for each of the plurality of participants requesting connection to the reservationless conference: receiving at an multi-point control unit (MCU) a dial in number; determining if the dial in number matches the conference profile; if the dial in number matches the conference profile: automatically detecting parameters of a requesting terminal, said parameters comprising a terminal maximum rate for the requesting terminal and the type of the requesting terminal; determining a required communication rate that is the minimum of the terminal maximum rate and the conference maximum bit rate; determining if sufficient resources are available for the requesting participant to participate in the reservationless conference; and connecting the requesting participant into the reservationless conference; and if the dial in number does not match a conference profile, denying the requested connection.