Abstract: One or more gateways (107 and 108) as serve to interconnect the discrete call facilitation platforms (403 and 404) of a given communication network with an external communication network (109) as provided with the routing addresses of such discrete call facilitation platforms. The discrete call facilitation platforms, however, are not provisioned in a reciprocal fashion. Instead, the discrete call facilitation platforms are only provided with a subset of available gateway addresses. In a preferred approach, this is accompanied by less-than-fully-meshed connectivity between the gateways and the discrete call facilitation platforms.

Abstract: These teachings facilitate interaction between two or more communication networks (10 and 11) comprising separate and discrete communication system peers. At least one of these networks is functionally partitioned with respect to interrogation and call signaling procedures over a plurality of geographic service areas (14, 15, and 16). Gateways (12 and 13) permit interaction between these networks, wherein at least some of the gateways provide functionally partitioned interrogation and call signaling procedures for some, but not all, of the plurality of geographic service areas. Upon receiving (32) a call routing message from a source from a remote communication network, which message identifies a target communication unit that is currently serviced by the first communication network, such a gateway can process (33) that call routing message as a function, at least in part, of a home geographic service area and a serving geographic area as corresponds to the target communication unit.

Abstract: One or more gateways (107 and 108) as serve to interconnect the discrete call facilitation platforms (403 and 404) of a given communication network with an external communication network (109) as provided with the routing addresses of such discrete call facilitation platforms. The discrete call facilitation platforms, however, are not provisioned in a reciprocal fashion. Instead, the discrete call facilitation platforms are only provided with a subset of available gateway addresses. In a preferred approach, this is accompanied by less-than-fully-meshed connectivity between the gateways and the discrete call facilitation platforms.

Abstract: A system and method of routing messages between at least one server (104, 106, 108) and at least one remote device (114, 116, 118). A message (112) is received from a remote device (116). The remote device has an Internet Protocol (IP) address. The remote IP address is mapped to a server address corresponding to a selected one of a plurality of servers (104, 106, 108).

Abstract: Various embodiments are described to address the need for a method and apparatus of voice transcoding in a VoIP environment that effectively interconnects multiple voice encoding formats. In general, a packet-based tandem transcoder (201) receives (706) packets that include vocoder data frames in which source voice samples have been encoded according to a first vocoding format. The transcoder then decodes (708) the vocoder data frames to produce a sequence of linear speech samples. Using a non-circuit switched communication path, an encoder obtains (710) linear speech samples from the sequence of linear speech samples and encodes (712) groups of speech samples from the sequence of linear speech samples to produce vocoder data frames according to a second vocoding format.