Method and apparatus for identifying and eliminating the source of background noise in multi-party teleconferences

A mechanism is provided that allows participants on the conference call to identify, and then mute or filter, a participant(s) responsible for introducing the noise, regardless of whether the noise is caused by transmission impairments or by the participant(s) being in a noisy location. For example, individual users could be able to press a "test" button that could block each of the participants one at a time. This would allow the source of the noise to be identified. This "test button" could be one or more of provided at the endpoint(s), be enabled through a web interface or, for example, through a dedicated conference call interface at the endpoint(s) or at the conference bridge. The blocking of each participant could occur through interaction with the main PBX using, for example, in-band signaling to the PBX. Once the source(s) of the noise is identified, noise mitigation can be applied as needed.