Patent ID: 7965832
Filing Date: 2011-06-21
Classification: H04M

Abstract:
1. A call management system comprising: a plurality of telephony channel interfaces, each configured to communicate with a particular telephony communications channel; a plurality of load balancing resource interfaces, each configured to communicate with a packet-based load balancing resource; and a processor configured to receive call requests via said telephony channel interfaces and query load balancing resources via said load balancing resource interfaces to determine a resolution for the call request, wherein the call request includes call information; said processor also configured to determine from the call information a set of parameters, the set of parameters comprising a call termination point, time that the call request is received, telephony channel over which the call request is received, a telephony communications protocol according to which the call request is received, and a priority parameter associated with the call request; said processor configured to detect presence information for the plurality of packet-based load balancing resource interfaces by monitoring activities of a plurality of packet-based load balancing resources associated with the telephony communications protocol to discard unnecessary protocol specific overhead associated with processing of secondary format conversions for unavailable load balance resources; said processor further configured to parse said call information in a first format conversion to remove unnecessary protocol-specific overhead and convert a format of said call information, the format based upon a resource-specific protocol, into an internal format, to compare the call information with selection criteria to select one of the packet-based load balancing resources in the order of presence based upon at least one parameter contained in the set of parameters determined from the call information, query the selected packet-based load balancing resource to resolve the call request, and receive a response from the selected packet-based load balancing resource indicating whether the call request can be resolved; wherein said processor is additionally configured to select and query subsequent ones of the plurality of packet-based load balancing resources in the order of presence if the call request was not resolved, said processor continuing to select and query in the order of presence until no further load balancing resources are left to be queried or until the call request is resolved, and if the call request was resolved, to convert said call information in a secondary format conversion from the internal format into another format based upon a protocol utilized by the selected load balancing resource or a subsequently selected load balancing resource wherein the selection criteria specifies a priority order for call requests based on the telephone protocol.