Patent ID: 7197036

Claim:
A method for routing messages between a mated pair of routing nodes having a distributed internal processing architecture and one or more redundantly connected remote applications, the method comprising: (a) receiving a signaling message at a first communications module in a first routing node of a mated pair of routing nodes, the mated pair of routing nodes being redundantly connected to one or more remote applications, the signaling message being addressed to a first point code shared by the mated pair of routing nodes and the one or more remote applications; (b) determining, based on information in the signaling message, whether to forward the message to one of the remote applications or to a second routing node of the mated pair of routing nodes; (c) in response to determining to forward the message to one of the remote applications, replacing the first point code with a second point code used internally by the first and second routing nodes to identify the remote application and distributing the message to a second communications module within the first routing node using the second point code, the second communications module being associated with the remote application; and (d) in response to determining to forward the message to the second routing node, replacing the first point code with a third point code used internally by the first routing node to identify the second routing node and distributing the signaling message to a third communications module within the first routing node based on the third point code, the third communicatidns module being associated with the second routing node.