Patent ID: 7633929

Claim:
A method in an ingress gateway configured for interfacing with a source telephony switch according to a source telephony signaling protocol and communicating with an egress gateway via a Voice over Packet (VoP) network, the method comprising: first receiving by the ingress gateway and from the source telephony switch according to the source telephony signaling protocol a signaling message destined for a destination telephony switch; sending, by the ingress gateway to the egress gateway via the VoP network, a setup message that includes first information describing the source telephony signaling protocol, the egress gateway configured for interfacing with the destination telephony switch according to a destination telephony signaling protocol; second receiving, by the ingress gateway and from the egress gateway via the VoP network, a message that includes second information describing the destination telephony signaling protocol; and outputting the signaling message by the ingress gateway to the egress gateway via the VoP network according to a determined exchange type based on the second information.