MECHANISM AND METHOD FOR DISTRIBUTING ISUP STACKS OVER MULTIPLE LOOSELY COUPLED PROCESSORS

A thin ISUP layer (100) for internetworking an SS7 gateway and distributed ISUPs (90) residing on separate processors suitable for use in an SS7 network (50). The thin-ISUP layer (100) defines an operations/management module that controls circuit signaling functions between an SS7 gateway and the distributed ISUPs (90). A set of ISUP messaging functions are provided to control the sequencing of messages for distribution among the processors. Connection supervision is provided to maintain the connections between the processors. The thin ISUP layer (100) can be implemented between the MPT layer (84, 86, 88) and an ISUP layer (90) of distributed processors in the network (50).