Patent ID: 6987781

Claim:
A network element capable of routing a signaling message based at least in part on a Circuit Identification Code (CIC) parameter that is specified within the signaling message, the network element comprising: (a) a first communication module capable of transmitting messages to and receiving messages from a first communications network; (b) a second communication module capable of transmitting messages to and receiving messages from a second communications network; (c) a CIC Routing Database (CRD) that is uniquely keyed or indexed at least in part by CIC values and that contains routing instructions associated with each unique key or index value; and (d) a message routing process associated with one of the first and second communication modules for performing a lookup in the CIC routing database based on at least a CIC value extracted from a first message received by one of the first and second communication modules to locate routing instructions for the first message, wherein performing a lookup in the CIC routing database based on at least a CIC value extracted from the first message includes performing a lookup in the CIC routing database based on the CIC value extracted from the first message in combination with at least one point code extracted from the first message, and wherein performing a lookup in the CIC routing database based on the CIC value and at least one point code extracted from the first message includes selecting among entries in the CIC routing database corresponding to media gateway controllers that share a point code.