Patent ID: 7743131

Claim:
A method, executed at a hardware gateway node in a converged telephony/data network, for managing status audit messages requesting an operating status of a node in a signaling system 7 (SS7) network of the converged network that are made by nodes in a data network of the converged network, the method comprising: (a) receiving, from a first node in the data network, a first status audit message for requesting an operating status of a SS7node in the SS7 network; (b) receiving, from a second node in the data network, a second status audit message requesting the operating status of the SS7node in the SS7 network; (c) determining whether the second status audit message is received within a predetermined time period following receipt of the first status audit message; and (d) in response to determining that the second status audit message is received within the predetermined time period, discarding the second status audit message.