Patent ID: 7304985

Claim:
A communication management system for operation with a packet switched local area network, the communication management system comprising; a PSTN interface for communicating over a telephone line with a service provider central office; a network interface for communicating over the packet switched local area network with at least one real time communication device; a PSTN gateway comprising: means for establishing a logical channel over the packet switched local area network with a real time communication device in response to receiving session signaling that identifies a local area network address associated with the real time communication device, on a logical port associated with the telephone line; means for controlling the PSTN interface to transition the telephone line to an off hook state in response to receiving session signaling on a logical port associated with the telephone line; translation means for: providing digital audio over the logical channel, the digital audio representing a dial tone received on the telephone line from the central office; and providing one of a plurality of dual tone multi freguency signal on the telephone line in response to receipt of data from the real time communication device corresponding to the one of a plurality of dual tone multi freguency signals; means for receiving a session signaling message from the real time communication device that includes an identifier associated with the telephone line; means for determining a logical port associated with the telephone line; means for adding the logical port to a destination address of the session signaling message to generate a translated session signaling message; and means providing the session signaling message to the PSTN gateway on the logical port.