DISTRIBUTED MEDIA RESOURCES IN VOIP NETWORKS FOR PROVIDING SERVICES

VoIP networks and methods are disclosed for distributing media resources in a VoIP network for providing services. VoIP endpoints, media gateways, and/or other network nodes in the VoIP network report available media resources (i.e., available processing capacity) that are able to provide services, such as providing announcements, DTMF digit collection, etc, to a distributed resource server. The distributed resource server then assigns the available media resources among the VoIP endpoints and/or media gateways to perform services for calls in the VoIP network in order to distribute the tasks of performing services among different nodes of the VoIP network.