Abstract: Admission control means for controlling admission of traffic into a voice communication network, the admission control means comprises means for examining a call control message of a call control dialogue when admission of said traffic into said voice communication network is requested, the admission control means admit a traffic into said voice communication network only if the call control message accompanying the traffic admission request satisfies a pre-determined admission criterion.

Abstract: A switching apparatus for switching packetized voice traffic between a plurality of communication devices, the switching apparatus comprises a multi-layer switch, a plurality of communication ports, control means and ingress processing means, said packetized voice traffic comprises call control packets and medium packets which are exchanged between the communication devices via said communication ports, wherein medium packet traffic from a first communication device to a second communication device is split into a first call segment and a second call segment, the first call segment originates from said first communication devices and terminates at said switching apparatus, the second call segment originates from said switching apparatus and terminates at said second communication device, each medium packet from said first communication device is processed by said ingress processing means of said switching apparatus before onward transmission to said second communication device.

Abstract: An admission scheme for a communication network comprising the step of:—a) acquiring and storing the MAC address of a device on admitting the device to the communication network, b) checking the source MAC address of a data packet before said data packet is admitted into the communication network, and c) admitting a data packet into the communication network only if the MAC address is registered with the communication network.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for switching VOIP packets in a data network, wherein the method includes the steps of receiving a first packet in a network switch and determining if the first packet is a VOIP packet. Further, method includes determining a dynamically negotiated VOIP port for a VOIP session from at least one of the first packet and a second packet received in the network switch, if the first packet is determined to be the VOIP packet. Finally, the method includes the steps of classifying all subsequent VOIP packets corresponding to the dynamically negotiated VOIP port in accordance with predetermined parameters. The apparatus includes a network switch having at least one data port interface controller supporting a plurality of data ports for transmitting and receiving data, and a fast filtering processor in communication with the at least one data port interface.