Patent ID: 7106739

Claim:
A system for using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) address assignments to determine a local destination address of a received packet in a Network Address Translation (NAT) environment, the system comprising: a DHCP server to assign local Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to devices on a local network in response to an IP address request in the form of a DHCP packet sent by a device on the local network, the request packet containing in the options field a symbolic name of the device; a remote network, wherein the local IP addresses on the local network are not directly accessible to devices on the remote network; a NAT device to translate addresses from the remote network to the local network; a packet device to: receive packets from the remote; and receive packets from the devices on the local network, configured such that when it receives packets from devices on the local network, the packet device: changes a source IP address of the packet from the IP address of the device on the local network to the IP address of the packet device, and verifies that no other devices on the local network are already using the source port, and if another device is using the source port, the packet device assigns a new source port to the packet; an addressing device to determine the local destination address of the packets received by the packet device, wherein the addressing device uses an association table created from symbolic names of the devices on the local network and the local IP addresses associated with the devices, and the addressing device determines a symbolic name of a destination address of a device from the packet, utilizes the association table to determine the destination address of the packet by correlating the symbolic name of the device with the device's assigned IP address, and routes the packet to the destination address.