A communication server includes one or more ISDN ports or other wide area network ports, one or more local area network ports, a plurality of processors and data channel resources which execute a process for distributing data channel signal processing among the plurality of processors. The process includes maintaining resource information for a set of processors on the communication server, the resource information concerning levels of utilization of processors in said set of processors; detecting, in processors corresponding to particular input/output ports of the server, activity in data channels through input/output ports managed by the processors; sending requests in response to the detected activity from the corresponding processors to a managing processor on the communication server, said requests identifying compression or decompression services needed for the detected activity; selecting in the managing processor in response to the resource information and the request, service processors from the set of processors in the server to provide compression or decompression services identified in the request for the detected activity on the data channel; and routing the detected activity on the data channels to the selected service processors.