Patent · US Expired

Gateway shared by multiple virtual private networks

US7640319B1 · kind B1 · utility

14Cited by
8References
12Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateSep 30, 2003
Grant dateDec 29, 2009
Priority date
Expiry dateSep 22, 2025

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04L61/2592
  • WIPO fieldDigital communication
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A VPN gateway for interfacing two or more VPNs to external networks such as the internet or a PSTN having different addressing schemes, has a NAT shared by the VPNs for converting VPN addresses to addresses of the external network. An advantage of this is reduced number of additional network elements, e.g. boxes, and fewer additional addresses. The NAT can be a source and destination NAT, arranged such that entities in the external networks appear to have an address within an address range of the respective VPN. Thus, entities in the external resource can appear as trusted resources inside the VPN. The gateway can incorporate a converter for converting between formats such as VoIP packets and TDM calls.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.