Patent ID: 8291488

Claim:
A method comprising: upon an intermediary device on a network being turned on, booting controlling system software at the intermediary device such that no public network address is ever assigned to the intermediary device; the intermediary device sending a boot message over the network to central authority software running on one or more first computing devices on the network; the central authority software in response sending messages over the network to the intermediary device and to a second computing device on the network to establish a private tunnel with one another; the intermediary device and the second computing device establishing the private tunnel with one another over the network; the intermediary device opening a remote connection to the second computing device through the private tunnel so that peripherals connected to the intermediary device can be used as if the peripherals were directly connected to the second computing device; and the intermediary device conveying communications back and forth from the peripherals over a connection through the private tunnel to a virtual controller interface of the second computing device, such that the intermediary device has no knowledge of specific details of the peripherals themselves, and application programs running on the second computing device and that access the peripherals have no knowledge that the peripherals are not directly connected to the second computing device, wherein the intermediary device, the one or more first computing devices, and the second computing device are hardware devices.