A telephony network for enabling the origination and termination of telephone
calls
between one or more subscriber terminals connected to a public packet network with
an open addressing protocol and one or more non-subscriber terminals connected
to a PSTN network. Subscribers to the telephony network have E.164 numbers mapped
to their current IP address and published by a mapping server so other subscribers
and non-subscribers can call the subscriber. The mapped information is published
on either a HTML or XML page for direct use over the Internet by other subscribers
or for use by a gateway device. The gateway device enables non-subscribers on the
PSTN to directly call subscribers. Calls between subscribers completely by-pass
the PSTN. Subscribers can also call anyone with a phone number whether they are
a subscriber or not.