System for connecting computer-requested telephone calls using a distributed network of gateways

An apparatus allowing a client computer to cause communications to be established between two devices connected to the PSTN and identified by phone numbers, comprising:

• a) A call table allowing the storage and update of callrequests, each callrequest being a data record containing two phone numbers, a unique identifier, an optional maximum duration, an actual duration, a status, and a creation timestamp. The set of valid values for the status field contains at least:
• an “unhandled” status indicating that the call has not been handed to a telephony gateway
• a “handled” status indicating that the call has been handed to a telephony gateway, but has not been completed
• a “completed” status indicating that the telephony gateway that handled the call has completed the call and reported back the duration
• b) An application server having access to the calltable and accessible to the client computer via a data network and programmed to validate a client computer using a username (clientid) and password supplied by the client computer, and to insert callrequests into the calltable at the request of validated client computers.
• c) An application server (possibly the same computer as the server described above) having access to the calltable and accessible to the gateway and programmed to:
• Retrieve callrequests having “unhandled” status from the calltable and report them to the gateway, at the request of the gateway, and set the status of reported callrequests to “handled”.
• Update callrequests in the calltable with duration information reported by the gateway, and with a “completed” status.
• Update client account records with the cumulative total time of calls requested by the respective clients.
• d) A telephony gateway with data network access to the appserver and with multiple channels of network access to the PSTN, and programmed to:
• Periodically communicate with, or poll, the appserver, reporting the number of callrequests it can currently handle, along with the durations of callrequests that have been completed;
• and receiving new callrequests.
• For each new callrequest received, make two phone calls using available PSTN channels and bridge the calls together within the interface hardware.
• Time each connected callrequest, terminating both constituent calls if the callrequest reaches its maximum duration or if the party at the end of one of the constituent calls terminates it.