A real-time or streaming speech processing system and method is disclosed with capabilities distributed between and client and a server where the server may be reached via the Internet. The speech processing entails digitizing and converting the utterances to features extracted to help the processing. The features are sent via a communications channel to the server where the recognition occurs. The features extracted allow low bandwidth channels to be used with still maintaining real-time response. The recognizer will determine the most likely text representing the utterances and return the text to the client. The system can be used to identify and/or verify who is speaking.