Patent ID: 8085662

Claim:
A system for controlling Local Area Network (LAN) traffic, the system comprising: a traffic access provider; a network resident comprising managed connection requesting logic to send a managed network connection request over the LAN, the request including a specification of a network traffic filter; connection establishment logic to establish a managed network connection between the network resident and the traffic access provider in response to the request and to assign a network resident identifier to the network resident; and wherein the traffic access provider comprises: traffic reception circuitry to receive managed network traffic from the network resident over the LAN, the managed network traffic comprising the network resident identifier; filter determination logic to determine whether the network traffic satisfies the specified network traffic filter; traffic modification logic to modify the network traffic to produce modified network traffic if the network traffic satisfies the specified network traffic filter; and traffic sending logic to send the modified network traffic to the network resident over the LAN on the established connection if the network traffic satisfies the specified network traffic filter; and wherein the network resident further comprises transmitting logic to transmit unmanaged traffic from the network resident to the LAN over a local area network interface while the managed network connection is active, in which the unmanaged traffic does not comprise the network resident identifier.