Patent ID: 8005981

Claim:
A computer network system, including: a plurality of client nodes, each of which has a unique data link layer address; at least one network device which is able to access the unique data link layer address of at least one client node of the plurality; a database configured to include the unique data link layer address of each client node of the plurality and associated user information for each client node of the plurality, wherein the user information includes at least one of a logical user group, a physical location of the client node, or a logical location of the client node, wherein the physical location of a device node is indicated by an incoming router NIC number and the logical location of a device node is indicated by a VLAN ID; a dynamic data structure configured to include a DNS binding between the unique data link layer address, a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) and an IP address for one or more client nodes of the plurality; wherein the at least one network device is configured to: use the accessed data link layer address to uniquely identify the at least one client node; upon identification of the at least one client node in association with a communication to or from the at least one client node, provide user-specific services at a network layer or above to the at least one client node based on the associated user information corresponding with the unique data link layer address of the at least one client node, wherein providing the user-specific services includes communicating, responsive to the associated user information, human perceivable content that is adapted for the location of the at least one client node or the logical user group; receive, from a first client node of the plurality of client nodes, a DNS request specifying the FQDN of a second client node of the plurality of client nodes; execute a twice NAT procedure if an IP address collision exists between the first client node and the second client node of the plurality of client nodes, wherein a first unique IP address for which there is no address collision is issued to the first node and a second unique IP address for which there is no address collision is issued to the second node; update the DNS binding of the first client node to include the first unique IP address and update the DNS binding of the second client node to include the second unique IP address; and return the second unique IP address to the first client node in response to the DNS request.