Patent ID: 7426627

Claim:
A computing system comprising: a resource for providing resource services, each resource service being accessed by way of a system address (SA); a device for requesting the resource services of the resource by way of requests, each request including a remote address (RA) corresponding to an SA of the resource; and a centralized address translator (CAT) having a database of RA/SA translations for the resource and the device, each RA/SA translation in the database corresponding to a respective RA and SA, the CAT for receiving requests from the device for the resource and for each request translating the RA thereof to the corresponding SA according to the corresponding RA/SA translation in the database and forwarding the translated request to the resource; the device having a remote address translator (RAT) with a cache for storing RA/SA translations as obtained from the CAT, each RA/SA translation as stored in the database of the CAT including a priority flag set to indicate whether the RA/SA translation is considered by the RAT to be a priority translation, each RA/SA translation as stored in the cache of the RAT including a validity flag set to indicate whether the translation is valid, the validity flag for each priority translation in the cache of the RAT initially being set when the translation is obtained from the CAT to indicate that the priority translation is valid, the validity flag for each translation in the cache of the RAT subsequently being set to indicate that such translation is not valid if the CAT notifies the RAT that the SA of such translation has been changed, the RAT for receiving requests from the device for the resource and for each request determining whether an RA/SA translation in the cache corresponds to the RA of the request, and if so determining whether the corresponding translation is a priority translation, and if so determining whether the corresponding validity flag of the corresponding priority translation is set to indicate that such translation is valid, and if so translating the RA to the corresponding SA according to the valid priority RA/SA translation in the cache and forwarding the translated request to the resource, the RAT otherwise forwarding the request to the CAT for address translation.