Patent ID: 6898278

Claim:
A signalling switch for use in information protocol telephony, and for initiating, sustaining, and terminating a plurality of discrete voice and data calls simultaneously, comprising: a physical mounting shelf having a computer bus and a plurality of slots thereon, including a first host slot and a plurality of non-system slots, all in communication with said computer bus; a first single board computer card placed in said host slot to serve at least as an operations and maintenance control card for said signalling switch; a first non-system card placed in a first non-system slot to serve as a message transport controller card for said signalling switch; at least one second non-system card placed in at least one second non-system slot to serve as a master application controller card; at least two local buses, at least one of which is on said first non-system card, and at least one PMC site on said first non-system card connected on the first of said two local buses; the second of said two local buses being selectively located on one of said first non-system card and a netbackplane to which said non-system cards are connected; said second local bus providing local bus communication between said first non-system card and said at least one second non-system card; a telephony routing information protocol software being resident on said first message transport controller card; and an Ethernet interface resident in said signalling switch to provide communication between said signalling switch and clients and routers, whereby said signalling switch is positioned in an information protocol telephone network environment to initiate a transaction between a client and the network or between the network and a client, to sustain any call being thus handled, and to terminate the transaction between the client card and the network or between the network and the client when signalled to do so, under the control of said resident telephony routing information protocol software.