Abstract: The present invention provides a method for recovering a mismatch between a media gateway (MGW) and a media gateway controller (MGC). The MGC believes that a channel is idle and attempts to assign the channel in a bearer connection. The state information of the MGW indicates that the channel is busy. In response to a message indicating that the channel assignment failed from the MGW, the MGC sends a subtract message to the MGW to locate the termination and release that resource by returning the termination to an idle state. At this point the state of the channel has been resynchronized between the MGW and the MGC. The MGW then removes all endpoints associated with the context to release the resource from all contexts and bearer connections.