Patent ID: 7945945

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a packet, by a network device, from an attached function that initiates network access on a distributed computing network, wherein the packet is received without errors with a valid source address in a source address field; acquiring source address block information from at least an OUI (Organization Unique Identifier) field of a MAC address or an IAB (Individual Address Block) address block for the attached function from the received packet, wherein the source address block information represents a subset of a total addressing capability; in response to acquiring the source address block information, obtaining stored policy information based, at least in part, on the source address block information; determining one or more policies based, at least in part, on the source address block information, wherein the one or more policies include one or more of an ingress and an egress policy, wherein the source address block information is used as a starting point in defining restrictive policies to securely protect network devices; setting, by the network device, the one or more determined policies; and transmitting the packet from at least one port of the network device based, at least in part, on one or more of the determined ingress and egress policies which can further be dynamically refined based on additional network information besides the source address block information.