According to the principles of the invention, there is provided a
conferencing system that dynamically assigns calls to DSP resources. The
system may attempt to process each audio conference on a single DSP node,
so that information about conference participants does not need to be
shared across DSP nodes. Further, the mapping of call channels to
resources within a DSP node may be automated so that it is transparent to
a conferencing system control application. Where more than one DSP node
is required for a particular conference, there is further provided a
system for linking DSP nodes. There are also provided methods for
managing audio conferencing resources.