Patent ID: 7668306

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a controller to transfer information content between a first packet telephony stream on a first protocol stack from a first network and a second packet telephony stream on a second protocol stack from a second network; a stream transformer to send and receive the first packet telephony stream on one side of a boundary between the first and second networks and to send and receive the second packet telephony stream on the other side of the boundary wherein the stream transformer uses at least one of time division multiplexing (TDM) and exchange of data structures containing digitized segments of a telephony payload to transfer the information content and to maintain separation between the protocol stacks; a protocol translator to translate a first protocol used on one side of the boundary into a second protocol used on the other side of the boundary; an address translator (AT) to translate a first address used on one side of the boundary into a second address used on the other side of the boundary; a first interface coupled to the controller for interfacing with the first network; a second interface coupled to the controller for interfacing with the second network; a packet inspection engine to inspect a data stream between the first network and the second network and to remove the telephony data packets from the data stream; and a packet disassembler/reassembler (PDR) to receive the telephony data packets from the packet inspection engine and read a header of each telephony data packet to direct each telephony data packet to a protocol stack responsible for a telephony stream.