Patent ID: 8825816

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a device service manager server (DSM) having an IP redirector module configured to coordinate network device communication between at least a first and second device service controllers (DSCs) behind respective firewalls, and that each have a management module to manage an access module to proxy communications for networked devices behind a firewall on a wide area network relative to a location of the DSM on the wide area network, where the DSM serves as a central management station for a distribution of configuration information to the DSCs, wherein an a priori installed executable boot up file in the first DSC is scripted with code to provide a unique ID of the first DSC, to determine a current IP address of the first DSC, to supply a DSM IP address on the wide area network of the DSM, and to activate code to initiate communications with the DSM, wherein a device configuration engine in the first DSC without a prompt by the DSM then sends an initial configuration file with at least the unique ID of the first DSC and the first DSC's current IP address information via a secure communication channel to the supplied DSM IP address of the DSM, and the IP redirector module receives this configuration information, cooperates with a user data replication manager module in the DSM to create a new device configuration file with the initial configuration information and additional information for the first DSC and then makes a master copy of the device configuration file in a registry of the DSM.