Soft switch using distributed firewalls for load sharing voice-over-IP traffic in an IP network

A telecommunications network comprising:

• a plurality of switches capable of handling voice-over-IP (VoIP) traffic between calling devices and called devices, each of said plurality of switches 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;
• and
• an Internet protocol (IP) packet network for interconnecting said plurality of switches;
• and
• at least one media gateway coupled to said IP packet network.