Importance

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Abstract

A gateway is provided which routes a packet sent from a user to a connected network utilizing a per-user routing table. This is accomplished by extracting a source address from the packet; finding a per-user routing table corresponding to the source address, the per-user routing table containing entries corresponding to one or more currently accessible networks for the user and the range of network addresses corresponding to the currently accessible networks; extracting a destination address from the packet; seeking an entry in the matching per-user routing table with a range of network addresses containing the destination address; routing the packet to a matching network if the destination address is contained within one of the ranges of network addresses for the currently accessible networks; and routing the packet to a default network if the destination address is not contained within one of the ranges of network addresses for the currently accessible networks. This allows different users to have access to a different set of networks and allows a user to select the network he wishes to access. The gateway may also guarantee that packet are routed through a particular destination ISP or network by looking up the destination ISP or network in a table, each entry in the table having a router network address corresponding to each network currently accessible; establishing a tunneling session to the matching router network address; and forwarding the packet to the router network address through the tunneling session.

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First Claim