A method and apparatus for identifying and prioritizing applications and application servers in a Voice over IP network is disclosed. In a first embodiment, elements of signaling information are extracted from a call and are mapped to parameters associated with the call. These mapped parameters are then used by a service broker in a VoIP network to identify one or more application servers adapted to process the values of the respective parameter. The service broker may illustratively identify the application servers by a pointer to permit flexible reassignment of processing of a given parameter. The matched pointer/parameter combinations are then mapped to a precedence index. Then, according to this precedence index, the aforementioned pointers are mapped to specific addresses of application servers and the elements of signaling information are forwarded to those addresses for processing of applications.