A system for managing internet protocol of at least unicast and/or
multicast communications over a network has a network interface 20 for
interfacing between the network 10 and other parts of the system. An
audio compression/decompression and packetising controller 30 is
interposed between the interface 20 and an audio mixer 40 such that the
network interface outputs audio signals to the audio mixer for mixing the
audio signals at different respective audio levels. An audio channel
manager is connected to the controller 30 and audio mixer 40 so as to
dynamically allocate audio channels and for connecting the audio mixer to
an allocated channel. A message manager 60 is connected to the network
interface and to the audio channel manager for managing the unicast
and/or multicast communication of the audio signals.