Patent ID: 8379640

Claim:
A first internetwork device comprising: a receiving module configured to receive a packet from a first network; an inter-device packet transfer interface configured to carry out inter-device packet transfer involving transfer of a packet to or from a second active internetwork device; an inter-device packet transfer controller configured to control packet transfers via the inter-device packet transfer interface between the first active internetwork device and the second active internetwork device such that multiple fragmented packets created from a same original packet are collected by either the first internetwork device or the second internetwork device, the fragmented packets being packets created by dividing a single original packet into multiple parts when one of the fragment packets is received via the receiving module; an address translation module configured to translate between a local address used within a specific network and a global address used across multiple networks, for at least one of a source address and a destination address of a packet; and a transmission module configured to transmit an address-translated packet to a second network.