Patent ID: 7472176

Claim:
A method for a device to obtain an IP address automatically, comprising: a device dividing the hardware address field in a Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) request packet into N sub-fields, wherein N is an integer greater than 1; filling in each of the N sub-fields of the hardware address field by said device and a relay proxy server or by the relay proxy server and forwarding the BOOTP request packet, wherein N corresponds to the number of the device and the relay proxy server or corresponds to the number of the relay proxy servers; a BOOTP server combining contents filled in the N sub-fields of the hardware address field to form a unique identifier of the device, assigning an IP address to said device according to the contents in the N sub-fields of said hardware address field, then generating a BOOTP response packet which includes at least the IP address of said device; and said device obtaining the IP address from said BOOTP response packet forwarded by the relay proxy server; wherein the contents in said N sub-fields include at least one of information of interface board number, port number, slot number or Virtual Path Identifier/Virtual Channel Identifier (VPI/VCI) of an ATM Permanent Virtual Connection (PVC) of said device.