US Patent 7480710 Resolving duplication of IP addresses in IP networks

A routing module resolves the conflict of IP addresses among at least two devices connected over a network. The routing module assigns a global IP address to a device based on the addressing configuration of the device. The outbound packets are sent with this global IP address. A record of the global IP address assigned to the device, the local IP address and MAC address are maintained by an information module. Where the local IP address of two or more devices is the same, the MAC address is used to determine the appropriate destination device. Routing module determines the entry in the information module that corresponds to the global IP address included within the IP header of inbound packets. The inbound packets are sent to the local IP address and MAC address of the appropriate destination-device that is derived from the entry that corresponds to the global IP address.