3com Corporation

Ta-Sheng Lin

Chandrasekharan Nilakantan

Kiho Yum

Network traffic from a central device across a communication link to a remote device is controlled based upon central traffic management resources in the central device. The central traffic management resources are coupled to a communication link and monitor data packets received across the communication link to learn characteristics of the remote network. Based on the learned characteristics, traffic management messages are generated in the central traffic management resources. These messages are forwarded to an interface device on the remote network, where traffic on the communication link is controlled in response to the traffic management messages. Thus, the remote interface is configured automatically by central traffic management resources running in the central device without human intervention at the remote network. The traffic management messages manage traffic across a communication link of two types. First, traffic management messages identify types of packets to be forwarded from the remote interface across the communication link. Second, traffic management messages identify types of packets to be composed by the remote interface for communication to users of the remote network. Thus, packages originating on the remote network are filtered so that only necessary packets are forwarded to the central site. Similarly, packets which normally originate from the central site are 'spoofed' at the remote site in response to management messages generated at the central site. The central traffic management resources execute a transport protocol for the traffic management messages which are independent of a network address for the remote interface.

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Ta-Sheng Lin