Patent ID: 6931529

Claim:
A computer program product for providing end-to-end protection for datagrams in a computer networking environment, the computer program product embodied on one or more computer-readable media and comprising: computer-readable program code means for protecting each of a plurality of network segments that comprise a network path from a datagram originator to a datagram destination, further comprising: computer-readable program code means for establishing a first protected network segment from the datagram originator to a first of one or more gateways in the network path; computer-readable program code means for cascading zero or more protected gateway-to-gateway segments along the network path, each of the gateway-to-gateway segments being cascaded from one of the gateways in the network path to a next successive one of the gateways; and computer-readable program code means for cascading a last protected network segment from a final one of the gateways to the datagram destination, wherein the final gateway is the first gateway if no gateway-to-gateway segments are required, wherein each of the gateways retains cleartext access to datagrams sent on the network path.