Conversational networking via transport, coding and control conversational protocols

A communication system for use in a real-time distributed conversational network, the communication system comprising:

• a communication stack comprising:
• a first layer for generating encoded audio data;
• a second layer for wrapping encoded audio data in a real-time encoded audio data stream;
• a third layer for wrapping control messages in a real-time control data stream
• comprising control data that enables real-time control and coordination of
• conversational distributed functions over the network;
• and
• a fourth layer for generating a real-time transmission control data stream, wherein the real-time transmission control data stream comprises meta information for providing coding scheme notifications.

A method for providing real-time distributed conversational computing, comprising the steps of:

• generating encoded audio data;
• wrapping encoded audio data in a real-time encoded audio data stream;
• and
• wrapping control messages in a real-time control data stream comprising control data that enables real-time control and coordination of conversational distributed functions over the network,
• wherein the audio data comprises compressed feature vectors representative of speech and wherein the encoded audio data comprises a file format that enables transmission of segments of speech and decompression of the segments of speech in a random order.