Other

Unified Access Communications

Lalit Jain

Bret Harsham

Michael T Ford

A network device that translates addresses of machines on physically separate networks and filters packets at the link, network and transport layers implements a virtual LAN over interconnected computer networks transparent to the computer networks. Using authentication and encryption, a secure connection between these network devices over a public wide area network implements a virtual private network and enables the definition of virtual LANs over the virtual private network. The network device has three tables for network address translation, routing, and filtering. A controller processes each incoming packet by translating network addresses to determine the destination of the packet, routing the packet to the determined location and filtering the packet according to filters defined for traffic between the source destination of the packet. If the packet is to be directed to a wide area network, encryption and authentication procedures can be provided to ensure secure transmission of the packet.

Network device for supporting construction of virtual local area

A centralized computer network management system that simultaneously configures and monitors computers in a computer network. The computer network management system allows a network administrator to describe the computer network according to both its physical topology and logical groups of machines and users in the computer network. Each network device, computer, or groups of network devices and computers can be associated with one or more rules which define configuration parameters. These rules may be inherited by machines through both the physical and logical relationships of the machines in the computer network. This centralized administration of the computer network simplifies the task of configuring and monitoring the network. All machines in the computer network also can be configured or monitored simultaneously.

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Boston, MA, United States of America

Lalit Jain