1. A method comprising: maintaining status data for each component of a plurality of components; wherein the status data for each component includes: connection status data indicating whether the component is connected to a device; routing status data, different from the connection status data, indicating whether the device is permitted to route audio or visual information to or from the component; maintaining policy data indicating one or more policies for selecting routes by which to route audio or visual information; based at least on the connection status data for one or more components and on the routing status data for the one or more components, evaluating the one or more policies to select one or more routes for routing particular audio or visual information; wherein the evaluating of the one or more policies to select the one or more routes is performed by the device.