Patent ID: 8000464

Claim:
A method for facilitating connections and maintaining peering information, comprising: receiving, at a telecommunications peering network, a first call offer for a call destined for a telephone number; querying a peering database to determine if the telephone number is assigned to a peering partner of the telecommunications peering network; determining that the telephone number is assigned to a first peering partner; providing a second call offer for the call to the first peering partner; receiving a destination unreachable response from the first peering partner regarding the second call offer; querying a local number portability database regarding the telephone number; receiving a response from the local number portability database indicating that a local routing number associated with the telephone number belongs to a particular CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier); providing a third call offer for the call to a public telecommunications network; and receiving a cause code from the public telecommunications network indicating whether the call can be routed; wherein each of the receiving, querying, determining and providing steps are implemented by a processing unit at the telecommunications peering network, the processing unit configured to access instructions from a memory device and execute the instructions to achieve each of said steps.