Patent ID: 8125915

Claim:
A method comprising: facilitating remote management of a bridge device by a servicer provider from a remote location via a wide area network (WAN) including the Internet by: (a) providing the bridge device that has not been assigned a public IP address by the service provider, wherein the bridge device includes a bridge device private IP address, is configured to operate as a short lease Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server, and is coupled downstream from the WAN and upstream from a router through a local area network (LAN); (b) providing a short lease DHCP address and the bridge device private IP address by the bridge device to the router over the LAN and, in response, automatically disabling the short lease DHCP server in the bridge device; (c) acquiring a public IP address from the service provider by the router through the bridge device and over the WAN in response to the short lease DHCP address expiring; (e) forwarding management traffic received from the service provider at the remote location via the WAN through the bridge device to the router; (f) receiving the management traffic passed through the bridge device at the router via the public IP address; (g) forwarding the management traffic back to the bridge device from the router via the LAN, wherein the management traffic is forwarded from the router to the bridge device via the bridge device private IP address; and (h) performing at least one management task on the bridge device from the remote location with the management traffic.