Patent ID: 8249230

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at a telecommunications system of an Internet fax system, an inbound fax call having associated therewith a source address, a destination address and a fax signal, wherein the destination address corresponds to a particular subscriber of the Internet fax system; switching, by the telecommunications system, the inbound fax call to a call mediation system of a plurality of call mediation systems within the Internet fax system by performing round-robin load balancing among the plurality of call mediation systems; determining, by the call mediation system, desired technical call processing capabilities for processing the fax signal based on a plurality of the source address, the destination address and a connection over which the inbound fax call was received; identifying, by the call mediation system, a subset of fax processing resources of a plurality of fax processing resources associated with the call mediation that have the desired technical call processing capabilities; switching, by the call mediation system, the inbound fax call to a selected fax processing resource of the subset of fax processing resources; translating, by the selected fax processing resource, the fax signal into a digital representation; causing the digital representation to be delivered or otherwise made available to one or more users associated with the particular subscriber; wherein the plurality of call mediation systems comprise a plurality of private branch exchanges (PBXs); wherein said switching, by the telecommunications system, the inbound fax call to a call mediation system comprises switching the inbound fax call to a PBX of the plurality of PBXs; and wherein said switching, by the call mediation system, the inbound fax call to a selected fax processing resource comprises calling a digital access cross connect system (DACS) logically interposed between the PBX and the fax processing resource.