Methods, systems, and computer program products for providing a dynamic and flexible media gateway termination identifier

A system for flexibly identifying terminations within a media gateway, the system comprising:

• a media gateway for providing terminations related to a bearer path of a call;
• and
• a media gateway controller for determining, controlling, and configuring the terminations within the media gateway via media gateway control messages communicated between the media gateway controller and the media gateway;
• wherein at least one of the media gateway and the media gateway controller is configured to receive a termination identifier (TID) definition that describes a new TID syntax that is used by the network node to identify terminations of the media gateway while interpreting incoming messages or generating outgoing messages, install the new TID syntax, verify the new TID syntax via generation of at least one test message, and process incoming and outgoing media gateway control messages using the new TID syntax upon verification of successful installation of the new TID syntax and a default TID syntax upon unsuccessful installation of the new TID syntax;
• and
• wherein the TID definition includes a flexible expression for identifying terminations of the media gateway in any one of a plurality of different formats, wherein the flexible expression includes a flexible hierarchical structure having a root level and a plurality of different delimited sublevels, and wherein the plurality of different sublevels includes at least a prefix for identifying a type of resource, a numerical range, and a path domain name;
• wherein the media gateway and the media gateway controller use different native formats to identify terminations and wherein the media gateway controller is configured to receive the new TID syntax having a format native to the media gateway.

A computer program product comprising computer executable instructions embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium for performing steps comprising:

• at a network node for processing gateway control protocol (GCP) messages:
• receiving a termination identifier (TID) definition that describes a new TID syntax used by the network node to identify terminations of the media gateway while interpreting incoming messages or generating outgoing messages, wherein the TID definition includes a flexible expression for identifying terminations of the media gateway in any one of a plurality of different formats, wherein the flexible expression includes a flexible hierarchical structure having a root level and a plurality of different delimited sublevels, and wherein the plurality of different sublevels includes at least a prefix for identifying a type of resource, a numerical range, and a path domain name;
• installing the new TID syntax;
• verifying whether the new TID syntax is successfully installed via generating and parsing of at least one test message;
• and
• in response to successful parsing of the at least one test message using the new TID syntax, processing incoming or outgoing GCP messages using the new TID syntax to identify a termination of the media gateway;
• and
• in response to unsuccessful parsing of the at least one test message using the new TID syntax, processing incoming or outgoing GCP messages using a default TID syntax to identify the termination of the media gateway;
• wherein the network node comprises a media gateway controller;
• and
• wherein the media gateway and the media gateway controller use different native formats to identify terminations and wherein the media gateway controller is configured to receive the new TID syntax having a format native to the media gateway.