Patent ID: 7668972

Claim:
In a first software object which executes on a computing device and which facilitates the transmission of data from the computing device over a computer network comprising a session/transport layer and a separate audio layer, said first software object participating in a data session in said session/transport layer of the network, a method of providing communication services to a second software object and of permitting said computing device to participate in an audio session in said audio layer of the network, wherein the data session in said session/transport layer has a session topology that is different from and independent of a session topology of the audio session in said audio layer of the network, said method comprising the acts of: exposing a first function in said session/transport layer of the network which returns a plurality of data to a caller in said audio layer of the network, said plurality of data comprising information about the configuration of the session/transport layer and including: one or more flags; a type of the data session, wherein the type comprises either a peer to peer transport or a client/server transport; a first identifier of a host in the data session; a second identifier which identifies the computing device; and a number indicative of a number of nodes that can participate in the first or second sessions; exposing a second function in said session/transport layer of the network which enables the audio layer to provide the session/transport layer with a pointer to the audio layer, wherein the exposed first and second functions are part of an application programming interface (API) of the session/transport layer; querying the audio layer using the pointer to retrieve an application programming interface (API) of the audio layer; and providing said plurality of data in response to a call to said callable function.