Telecommunication system and method for traversing an application layer gateway firewall during the establishment of an RTC communication connection between an RTC client and an RTC server

A telecommunication system for traversing an application layer gateway firewall during the establishment of a real-time communication (RTC) connection between an RTC client and an RTC server using a proprietary RTC signaling protocol, wherein the firewall has no specific knowledge of the proprietary RTC signaling protocol, comprising:

• an RTC client,
• an RTC server, and
• a firewall with multiple ports and comprising hardware, the hardware comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium,
• wherein the firewall has a control device for facilitating performance of a method, the method comprising:
• the RTC client and the RTC server negotiating, during establishment of the RTC communication connection, which ports of the ALG firewall are required for data packets to be exchanged via the RTC communication connection, the RTC client and the RTC server using at least one standardized message element of the proprietary RTC signaling protocol to include items of information relating to the ports during the negotiating so that the ALG firewall, during establishment of the RTC communication connection, detects which of the ports of the ALG firewall were negotiated as required for the data packets to be exchanged between the RTC server and the RTC client via the RTC communication connection for opening and closing the ports of the ALG firewall even though the ALG firewall has no specific knowledge of the proprietary RTC signaling protocol, wherein exchanging of signaling protocol variations takes place as part of an upgrade procedure from a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) connection to a WebSockets connection;
• the ALG firewall dynamically opening and closing the ports for the RTC communication connection in response to detection of the ports of the ALG firewall that were negotiated as required for the data packets to be exchanged between the RTC server and the RTC client via the at least one standardized message element of the proprietary RTC signaling protocol utilized by the RTC client and the RTC server during the negotiating.

A communication apparatus comprising:

• an application layer gateway (ALG) firewall comprising a processor connected to a non-transitory computer readable medium, the ALG firewall configured to establish a real-time communication (RTC) connection between an RTC client and an RTC server;
• the ALG firewall having no knowledge of a proprietary RTC signaling protocol usable by the RTC client and the RTC server to exchange proprietary RTC signaling to negotiate which ports of the ALG firewall are needed for data packets to be exchanged via the RTC communication connection, the proprietary RTC signaling having at least one standardized message element, wherein exchanging of signaling protocol variations takes place as part of an upgrade procedure from a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) connection to a WebSockets connection;
• the ALG firewall configured to utilize the at least one standardized message element of the proprietary RTC signaling exchanged between the RTC client and the RTC server to negotiate the ports needed for exchanging data packets during establishment of the RTC communication connection to detect which of the ports of the ALG firewall are negotiated as required for the data packets to be exchanged between the RTC server and the RTC client via the RTC communication connection and dynamically opening and closing the ports of the ALG firewall in response to detection of the ports via the at least one standardized message element of the proprietary RTC signaling exchanged between the RTC client and the RTC server during establishment of the RTC communication connection even though the ALG firewall has no specific knowledge of the proprietary RTC signaling protocol.