Methods, devices, signals, and systems are provided in a message routing architecture which provides improved capabilities for integrating “digital” communication through email messages with “analog” communication through voice and/or fax or pager messages. Email can be addressed using nothing more than a standard telephone or fax number. If the registered owner of the telephone or fax number has a corresponding email address, then the invention converts the telephone or fax number to the email address for delivery and uses standard email delivery systems to deliver the message. If no conventional delivery email address is known, or if the message sender or recipient specify multiple delivery modes, then the email message content is transformed into voice, pager and/or fax content and delivered to the recipient using the telephone or fax number which was specified as the email address. Familiar telecommunications services such as call forwarding and selective call blocking can also be used with messages that originate as email. The invention also supports use of telecommunications numbers as indexes into databases which contain public key certificates, to make it unnecessary for a proposed message recipient to provide its public key expressly in advance to each particular proposed message originator.

A first time that a Domain Name System (DNS) response message is sent by the gateway server of a network to a user device may be determined, the DNS response message being generated by a Local DNS server of the network in response to a DNS request message from the user device for routing via the gateway server to the user device. A second time that a client handshake message for an external server identified by a network address in the DNS response is received at the gateway server may be determined, in which the client handshake message is sent by the user device. A roundtrip time for the network that is a time difference between the first time and the second time is calculated. The roundtrip trip time is then halved to obtain a network latency time measurement for the network.

A method and a call routing system (CRS) are provided for routing an incoming call made to one of multiple numbers of a user to a call receiving client application (CRCA) deployed on one or more user devices when the called number is not reachable. The CRS, in communication with the CRCA deployed on one or more user devices, sets up a user account using one or more of the user's multiple numbers. The CRS detects availability of the CRCA on one or more user devices over a data network to accept an incoming call. The CRS receives the incoming call made to one of the numbers, when the called number is not reachable. The CRS routes the incoming call to the CRCA on one or more user devices over the data network on detecting the availability of the CRCA on one or more user devices over the data network.

A generic address resolution system facilitates communications among multiple network applications with heterogeneous addressing mechanisms, thereby allowing the network applications to interoperate with each other and/or with modules for providing enhanced functionalities. The address resolution system includes a resource mapping module that modularizes the components needed for address resolution and abstracts content from the underlying address types and content used by the network applications. The address resolution system includes a context engine that analyzes the addressing data to be resolved, selects one or more appropriate destination network applications based on contextual rules, and creates the application mapping template for the end-end routing of the communications among the network applications.

A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a computer-readable storage medium in a telephone having computer instructions to execute a web server application in the telephone. The web server application can be operable to detect an incoming plain old telephone service call, identify a calling party identifier from the incoming plain old telephone service call, and direct one of a plurality of devices detected by web server application to present the calling party identifier. Other embodiments are disclosed.

A traffic-monitoring system that monitors encrypted traffic exchanged between IP addresses used by devices and a network, and further receives the user-action details that are passed over the network. By correlating between the times at which the encrypted traffic is exchanged and the times at which the user-action details are received, the system associates the user-action details with the IP addresses. In particular, for each action specified in the user-action details, the system identifies one or more IP addresses that may be the source of the action. Based on the IP addresses, the system may identify one or more users who may have performed the action. The system may correlate between the respective action-times of the encrypted actions and the respective approximate action-times of the indicated actions. The system may hypothesize that the indicated action may correspond to one of the encrypted actions having these action-times.

The present disclosure is directed to allocating communication resources via information technology infrastructure. A system can provide a communication tag and an analytics tag for integration in a web site. The system can receive a request to allocate a phone number generated based on an interaction between the communication tag and the analytics tag. The request can include the communication endpoint identifier, the site identifier for the web site, and a bucket identifier formed from bucketing criteria corresponding to a network activity session of the computing device. The system can determine a virtual phone number to assign to a combination of the values of the fields provided in the request, and create a link between the assigned virtual number and the combination. The system can provide the assigned virtual phone number to the computing device that initiated the request.

Techniques are described for managing out of service telephone numbers (TNs) before returning them to active service. A telephone number profile score may be calculated for an out of service TN entering an aging protocol, the aging protocol comprising a pre-determined number of days the TN must remain out of service. The out of service TN may then be assigned a profile based on its telephone number profile score, the profile indicative of how quickly the TN will achieve one or more quality thresholds. The number of days from entry into the aging protocol it will take the TN to achieve the one or more quality thresholds based on its assigned profile may be determined. The quality threshold status of the TN may then be updated each time it crosses one of the quality thresholds. Once it completes the aging process, the TN may be placed into an inventory of TNs eligible for active service. Thereafter, the quality threshold status of the TN may continue to be updated each time it crosses one of the quality thresholds.

Methods, systems, and apparatus include computer programs encoded on a computer-readable storage medium for dynamic contact information assignment. A method includes: identifying a pool of telephone numbers; assigning the telephone numbers to a pool manager; allocating by the pool manager, subsets of the telephone numbers to a plurality of allocators, each allocator responsible for allocating telephone numbers to an associated group of content sponsors; determining a first allocation of a first subset, the first allocation being distributed among the content sponsors associated with a first allocator, creating first pools each associated with a respective one of the content sponsors associated with the first allocator; reclaiming one or more telephone numbers from a pool of the first pools; and assigning ones of the reclaimed telephone numbers by the first allocator into either other pools of the first pools or back to the pool manager for allocation to other allocators.

Systems and methods to selectively block calls from reaching destinations based on an input received from a callback connection. One embodiment includes a web server to receive a selection of an advertisement from an customer and to obtain a communication reference from the customer in response to the selection; a session border controller to interface with a packet switched network; and one or more telecommunication servers coupled to the session border controller and the web server, the one or more telecommunication servers to establish a connection for real time communications using the communication reference, to initiate a connection for real time communications with an advertiser of the advertisement after receiving an indication of acceptance of the connection established using the communication reference; where the advertiser is charged an advertisement fee in response to establishing a connection for real time communications between the advertiser and the customer.