Patent ID: 7961720

Claim:
A method for routing an Internet Protocol (IP)-based call through a first IP-based network to a second IP-based network, the method comprising: receiving an IP-based call request in the first network; identifying one or more geographic trunk groups that can be used to route the call request out of the first network, wherein each of the one or more geographic trunk groups represents a logical grouping of one or more IP trunk groups between the first IP-based network and the second IP-based network, wherein identifying one or more geographic trunk groups comprises accessing one or more geographic trunk group definitions, wherein each of the one or more geographic trunk group definitions further includes one or more attributes selected from a group consisting of: a geographic trunk group identifier, a group size, a group route advance profile, a signaling normalization profile, a second IP-based network identifier, a gateway site identifier, and a customer site identifier; and selecting one of the one or more geographic trunk groups; and routing the received call request via the selected geographic trunk group to an IP address associated with the selected geographic trunk group.