Patent ID: 7072332

Claim:
A switch capable of handling voice-over-IP (VoIP) traffic between calling devices and called devices, said switch comprising: a plurality of call application nodes capable of executing call process server applications, wherein a first call process server application is executed on a first one of said plurality of call application nodes and is associated with a similar second call process server application executed on a second one of said plurality of call application nodes separate from said first call application node, said first and second call process server applications thereby forming a first load sharing group server application; and a plurality of network address translation nodes capable of executing firewall server applications, wherein a first firewall server application is executed on a first one of said plurality of network address translation nodes and is associated with a similar second firewall server application executed on a second one of said plurality of network address translation nodes separate from said first network address translation node, said first and second firewall server applications thereby forming a second load sharing group server application, wherein VoIP traffic associated with VoIP calls is received by said second load sharing group server application and said second load sharing group server application selects one of said first and second firewall server applications to verify that said VoIP traffic is authorized to access at least one of said call process server applications in said call application nodes according to a load distribution algorithm.