Patent ID: 7701934

Claim:
A network management system, comprising a processor; a memory accessible by the processor; a computer program embedded within the memory, the computer program comprising: instructions to detect the receipt of one or more modified management messages having a payload, via a public network from a private network, wherein each of the one or more modified management messages including, within the payload, one or more modified data packets, each modified data packet having a unique managed device identifier comprising a community string for a simple network management protocol data packet; instructions to compare the community string to entries of a lookup table comprising originating device identifiers to determine an originating device within the private network based on the community string of each of the one or more modified data packets, wherein the community string is useable to distinguish the originating device having a particular private Internet protocol (IP) address within the private network from another managed device having the same particular private IP address within another private network; and instructions to manage one or more managed devices in accordance with a service level agreement (SLA), wherein the SLA is determined at least partially based on the one or more modified data packets and wherein the SLA includes a threshold packet delivery rate of the private network, a threshold latency of the private network, and a jitter of the private network.