Cisco Technology, Inc.

Robert W Whent

Michael P Hammer

Henry Louis Fourie

Thang Tat Do

Taiqi Fu

Anthony Pike

A network node, configured for interfacing between a source network having a source telephony protocol and a packet network configured for sending and receiving data according to Internet Protocol, is configured for generating an IP based transport message for transport of normalized information describing a signaling message received from the source network according to the source telephony protocol. The network node is configured for generating a generic transparency descriptor having generic attributes for describing the signaling message. The generic attributes include a protocol name that specifies the source telephony protocol relative to a prescribed set of source telephony protocol types, and a message identifier that specifies the message type according to the source telephony protocol. Optional attributes specifying respective parameters based on the particular signaling message also may be generated. The network node outputs the transport message having the generic transparency descriptor, enabling any node receiving the transport message to determine whether signaling operations specified by the signaling message can be executed, or whether alternate operations substituting for the signaling operations can be performed based on the generic transparency descriptor.

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Fingringhoe Colchester, United Kingdom

Robert W Whent