Patent ID: 8565220

Claim:
A method of signaling status information of an application service, the method being performed by a signaling gateway, the signaling gateway interconnecting an internet protocol (IP) network and a signaling system 7 (SS7) network, the method comprising: collecting application server status information of application servers associated with the application service, generating the status information of the application service from the collected application server status information by use of a given set of rules, wherein the status information is generated for signaling the status information to at least one peer, wherein the at least one peer is comprised in the IP network or in the SS7 network, wherein one of said application servers is hosted by one or more nodes of the IP network, wherein a point code (PC) and a subsystem number (SSN) is assigned to each application server, wherein the application servers associated with the application service share the same point code and the same subsystem number, wherein the application server status information of the application server specifies the status of the application server as one of: available, unavailable, and congested, wherein the application server status information is collected by receiving one of a Signaling Connection Control Part (SCCP) Subsystem Allowed (SSA) message indicating the availability of the application server, a SCCP Subsystem Prohibited (SSP) message indicating the unavailability of the application server, and a SCCP Subsystem Congest (SSC) message from the application server indicating the congestion of the application server, and wherein the signaling gateway monitors the status of the application server by sending a SCCP subsystem test (SST) message to the application server, wherein in response to the SCCP SST message the SCCP SSA message or the SCCP SSP message or the SCCP SSC message is received from the application server depending on the status of the application server.