Patent ID: 8209748

Claim:
A system configured to provide a network protection service for providing protective assistance to a subscribing host on a network, the system comprising: one or more computing devices; and one or more modules configured to, when executed by the one or more computing devices, cause the system to: establish a relationship with the subscribing host; detect a condition for providing the protective assistance to the subscribing host, the detecting of the condition being based at least in part on the established relationship; cause network traffic directed to the subscribing host to be rerouted to the network protection service instead of to the subscribing host in response to detecting the condition, the causing including modifying a mapping on at least one Domain Name System (DNS) server connected to the network to replace a first network address of the subscribing host corresponding to a domain name of the subscribing host with a second network address corresponding to the network protection service; notify the subscribing host that the protective assistance has commenced; receive and filter the rerouted network traffic by the network protection service; and forward at least a portion of the filtered rerouted network traffic to the subscribing host according to a capacity of the subscribing host to process the forwarded portion.