Patent ID: 7333492

Claim:
A media gateway control protocol (MGCP) proxy server for interfacing a plurality of MGCP gateways with a plurality of MGCP call agents independent of whether each of the gateways is served by a network address translation server, the proxy server comprising: a network interface with an assigned internet protocol (IP) address for exchanging MGCP messages over an IP compliant network; a notified entity map associating each of the plurality of gateways with a one of the plurality of call agents which supports the gateway; a registration map associating each of the plurality of gateways with a public socket on which an MGCP message was received from the gateway and an indication of a predetermined time window during which the public socket is valid; a gateway request map associating, for each of a plurality of MGCP messages translated by the proxy server: i) a unique transaction ID assigned to the MGCP message; and ii) a message transaction ID assigned to the MGCP message by the gateway; a translation module for: receiving an MGCP message generated by a gateway and addressed to the IP address assigned to the network interface, the MGCP message comprising a message transaction ID assigned by the gateway and an endpoint ID identifying the gateway, the endpoint ID comprising a local endpoint name and a domain; generating a unique transaction ID for assignment to the MGCP message; creating a translated message by: i) substituting the unique transaction ID in place of the message transaction ID; and ii) substituting an IP address assigned to the network interface in place of the domain of the endpoint ID of the MGCP message; providing the translated message to the network interface for sending to the call agent associated with the gateway in the notified entity map; and writing each of the unique transaction ID and the message transaction ID to a record of the gateway request map; and writing the public socket from which the message was received from the gateway to the record associated with the gateway in the registration map and updating the indication of the predetermined time window to a time period following receipt of the MGCP message.