Patent ID: 8670547

Claim:
A telecommunications network comprising: an originating switch to receive from a calling communication station a call intended for a network subscriber and to generate a call routing query in response to the received call, the call routing query indicating a dialed telephone number; a terminating switch associated with the network subscriber; interoffice trunk lines communicatively coupling the originating switch and the terminating switch; direct interface trunk groups communicatively coupling the originating switch and the terminating switch; a controller including a controller database, the controller database to store a capacity threshold associated with the network subscriber, the controller in communication with the originating switch, the controller to receive the call routing query and, in response thereto, to determine whether the dialed telephone number of the call routing query can be used to determine a data trunk from the originating switch, the controller database to store data including a list of telephone numbers used to allow access to the network subscriber which can be cross-referenced to derive a trunk route index, the trunk route index to identify a direct interface to the terminating switch associated with the network subscriber, the controller to use a called number contained in the call routing query received from the originating switch to derive the trunk route index for the network subscriber; the controller to return to the originating switch an Analyze_Route message including the dialed telephone number when the controller identifies a route to the terminating switch; the controller to return to the originating switch a Continue message including no parameters when the controller does not identify the route to the terminating switch; and when traffic on the direct interface trunk groups exceeds the stored capacity threshold, the controller to return to the originating switch the Continue message to instruct the originating switch to route the call to the terminating switch using the interoffice trunk lines.