Abstract: The present invention discloses a centralized routing engine that is able to assist gateways in making routing decisions for calls being placed in an IP network environment. Types of calls include voice, fax, video, etc. The routing engine provides significant flexibility to the gateways by allowing the gateways to designate preferences that define operational limits or requirements. A source gateway operator may set preferences such as the maximum price that is willing to be paid for a call, the maximum delay that will be tolerated and the maximum autonomous system hop count that will be tolerated. A destination gateway operator is likely only to be concerned with setting price schedules as preferences. Gateway operators may also set ‘preference criteria,’ which define the circumstances in which a certain set of preferences is to be applied.