SYSTEM AND A METHOD FOR AUTOMATICALLY SENSING AND CONFIGURING EXTERNAL NETWORK DEVICES, SPECIALLY CONCERNED WITH USING A BROADCAST MECHANISM FOR SENSING A HARDWARE FIRE WALL AND A API MECHANISM FOR SENSING A SOFTWARE FIRE WALL

摘要

PURPOSE: An automatic sensing function and a configuration of external network devices are provided to use a broadcast mechanism for supplying a hardware device sensing function, while providing a sensing function of a software fire wall through an application programming interface, and to use a polling technology not to change a gateway device setup. CONSTITUTION: Fire wall software usable in an IGD or other hardware gateway(207) and/or a gateway computer(208) protects a local network(205) from an improper access executed by a remote computer(211) which can access the network(205) through a WAN(209). The WAN(209) generally includes the Internet. The gateway computer(208) is a small-sized enterprise server such as an e-mail server, a web server, etc. The local network(205) includes additional resources such as directories and DBs.