APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR INTEGRATING PHONE COMMUNICATIONS AND DATA TRANSMISSION ON LANs AND FOR AUTOMATICALLY SELECTING LOWEST-PRICES CARRIER AND CONNECTION MODE

摘要

A apparatus for the integration of phone communications and IT data transmissions through a LAN provides central equipment and peripheral devices of said local area network comprising means, hardware and software, for the analogue/digital and digital/analogue conversion of phone signals into data packets and vice-versa, for the detection of data packets referring to phone communications, for the priority transmission of said data packets to the addressed phone sets, for the automatic transfer of phone communications from public phone network to LAN phone users and vice-versa, for the integrated management of messages having a multimedia content, for the performance of typical functions of an exchange and further, for the automatic selection of the most inexpensive telecommunication carrier and telephone connection mode as a function of phone service cost parameters and statistic parameters referring to the use of telephone services by each LAN phone user.