Patent ID: 8571038

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a device service manager server (DSM) having a network access module configured to cooperate with two or more device service controllers (DSCs) and serve as a central management station for allocating and assigning Virtual IP (VIP) addresses to network devices to proxy communications for networked devices on a local area network (LAN) where each DSC resides and the DSM is located exterior from the network devices on the LAN where communications associated with the assigned VIP addresses are being routed to, wherein the DSM assigns a first VIP address to a first DSC and establishes a route from the first VIP address to a destination network device, based on corresponding DSC and network device information stored in a registry of the DSM; and wherein first DSC preallocates a pool of VIP addresses available in its LAN, then sends the pool of VIP addresses to the DSM and the DSM maintains two pools for assigning VIP addresses, a smaller pool of VIP addresses used for requests from unknown public IP addresses and a larger pool of VIP addresses used for requests from known IP addresses registered with the DSC.