Distributed architecture for a telecommunications software switch

A software-based telecommunications switch architecture with distributed supervision, network communications, and signal processing provides an expandable call volume handling capacity without having to add additional supervisory processing capability. The call signals are processed by a plurality of media control platforms which communicate with a supervisory network services processor and communicate with the network through a packet manager. The switch can be expanded by adding more media control platforms without the need to provide a new or additional network services processor or packet manager.