Patent ID: 8204043

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, at a first network element, a first media-content packet associated with a first session within a Session over Internet Protocol (SoIP) network, the first media-content packet being associated with a quality-of-service parameter; identifying, in a priority database accessed by the first network element, a transmission priority value associated with the first media-content packet based on a value of the quality-of-service parameter; and sending, from the first network element, an instruction to a second network element to trigger the second network element to modify a priority indicator associated with a second media-content packet based on the transmission priority value, the priority indicator indicating a priority to transmit the second media-content packet over at least one of a connection within the first session or a connection within a second session, wherein the second network element does not have access to the priority database and is not configured to modify the priority indicator associated with the second media-content packet until the instruction is received.