Patent ID: 7752324

Claim:
A method for enabling identification of at least one address associated with ingress of a packet stream, comprising: identifying a portion of a packet data communication network as a trusted region; identifying all border devices at entry points on an outer boundary of the trusted region of the network; configuring each respective one of the border devices to mark predetermined packets transmitted into the trusted region of the network, each marking of a packet by a respective border device comprising providing a fragment of a network address of the respective border device with the packet; receiving a plurality of marked packets from one of the border devices; and processing address fragments from the received marked packets to reconstruct the network address of the one border device, wherein each respective one of the configured border devices performs the following steps: fragmenting the address of the respective border device into a first plurality of overlapping fragments of a first format; assigning fragment identifiers of a first range to the first plurality of fragments; and marking a first plurality of packets forwarded into the trusted region by including one of the first plurality of overlapping fragments and including a corresponding assigned fragment identifier of the first range in each of the first plurality of packets forwarded by the respective border device.