Patent ID: 8068824

Claim:
A method comprising: establishing, by a data-processing system, a communications session that connects a first terminal to a second terminal; detecting, by the data-processing system, that the first terminal disconnected from the communications session when the data-processing system fails to receive a keep-alive message from the first terminal within a first temporal interval, wherein the keep-alive message notifies the data-processing system that the first terminal has connectivity to a network; waiting, by the data-processing system, for receipt of: i. a resume-connectivity message that is automatically transmitted from the first terminal within a second temporal interval, and ii. a voice-channel-availability message that is automatically transmitted from the first terminal within a third temporal interval; automatically re-establishing, by the data-processing system, the communications session between the first terminal and the second terminal when the data-processing system receives both the resume-connectivity message and the voice-channel-availability message; and terminating, by the data-processing system, the communications session when the data-processing system fails to receive at least one of the resume-connectivity message and the voice-channel-availability message from the first terminal; wherein the keep-alive, resume-connectivity, and voice-channel-availability messages are different; and wherein the first, second, and third temporal intervals applies only to determining when the keep-alive, resume-connectivity, and voice-channel-availability messages, respectively, are received.