Patent ID: 8285875

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, with an intermediate network device positioned between a client device and a server in a network, an allocation message from the server that allocates a layer three (L3) network address for use by the client device identified by a unique identifier; storing, with the intermediate network device, data defining a binding between the unique identifier identifying the client device and the L3 network address reserved for use by the client device; determining, with the intermediate network device, whether to release the binding between the unique identifier identifying the client device and the L3 network address reserved for use by the client device based on whether a communication has been received from a remote authentication dial-in user server (RADIUS) server specifying a RADIUS-initiated disconnect for the client device; upon determining that the communication has been received from the RADIUS server specifying the RADIUS-initiated disconnect for the client device, determining, with the intermediate network device, that the a binding release did not occur in response to receiving a release message from the client device; automatically generating, with the intermediate network device, a release message on behalf of the client device upon determining that the binding release did not occur in response to receiving a release message from the client device; and outputting, with the intermediate network device, the automatically generated release message to the server that reserved the L3 network address for use by the client device identified by the unique identifier.