Patent ID: 8255112

Claim:
A method to perform maintenance operations on one or more assets of a mobile transportation unit, comprising: accessing a first network located on the mobile transportation unit from a terminal on a second network external to the mobile transportation unit wherein the first network provides connectivity between multiple systems on the mobile transportation unit which operate according to disparate communication protocols, and the second network is a ground-based network; establishing a communication connection between the terminal on the second network and at least one of the one or more assets of the mobile transportation unit connected to the first network, wherein the communication connection enables the terminal to communicate directly with the at least one of the one or more assets of the mobile transportation unit; and performing maintenance operations by sending commands from the terminal directly to the one or more assets, wherein: the first network comprises an open networking data domain which provides connectivity to multiple networking domains aboard the mobile transportation unit; and the open networking data domain maintains a table identifying network assets, wherein the table is configured based on an XML schema including an address and security attributes of each asset, and the open networking data domain utilizes address information from the table to enable establishing a communication connection between the terminal on the second network and at least one of the one or more assets of the mobile transportation unit.