Patent ID: 7805532

Claim:
A method for interoperability, the method comprising the acts of: providing a plurality of adapters, a plurality of gateways, and a router comprising an application bridge, a network bridge, and a billing bridge; receiving, by an adapter of the plurality of adapters, a first communication from a user of a first network which communicates according to a first communication protocol; normalizing, by the adapter in the plurality of adapters, the first communication into a network-independent format; forwarding, from the adapter in the plurality of adapters to the router, the normalized first communication; forwarding the normalized first communication from the network bridge to the application bridge and applying one or more services to the first communication independent of protocol, wherein the one or more services comprises a billing policy, virus checking, or content filtering; generating, by the router, a second communication for a user of a second network that communicates according to the second communication protocol, wherein generation of the second communication comprises: determining, by the router, the second communication protocol; and translating the normalized first communication into the second communication; and sending, by a gateway in the plurality of gateways, the second communication to the second network for routing to the second user.