Patent ID: 7734909

Claim:
A method for remotely servicing a computational component, comprising: providing a firewall and a computational component requiring servicing from a servicing entity responsible for servicing the computational component requiring servicing, the firewall analyzing packet communications to the computational component and being configured to block packets comprising servicing commands from the servicing entity; establishing, through the firewall, a session with a servicing computational component, the servicing entity being associated with the servicing computational component, wherein packets of the session comprise servicing commands from the servicing entity and responses, from the computational component requiring servicing, to the servicing commands, wherein the incoming session packets are permitted to pass through the firewall, wherein the session packets are of a session-type otherwise permitted by the firewall and unrelated to servicing, by the servicing entity, of the computational component, and wherein the packets omit payload normally associated with packets of the session type; receiving, by the firewall, an incoming packet associated with the session, the incoming packet comprising a machine executable servicing command from the servicing entity to be executed by the computational component requiring servicing, wherein the servicing command is in a payload portion of a voice-over-IP packet or a payload portion of an instant message packet; receiving a servicing response to the servicing command from the computational component requiring servicing; configuring the servicing response as at least one packet associated with the session; and sending, by the firewall, the at least one servicing response packet to the servicing computational component, forwarding, by the firewall, the servicing command to the computational component requiring servicing.