Enhanced large scale nat system

A method for processing packets between a router and a transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) network using a plurality of large scale network address translation (LSN) appliances, comprising:

• receiving a request from the router at a first LSN appliance arbitrarily selected from the plurality of LSN appliances, wherein the request includes a private IP address;
• applying a hash function to the private IP address to determine an owner appliance from the plurality of LSN appliances, and routing the request to the owner appliance;
• forwarding the request to the TCP/IP network from the owner appliance using a public IP address associated with the owner appliance;
• receiving a response from the TCP/IP network at a second LSN appliance arbitrarily selected from the plurality of LSN appliances, wherein the response includes the public IP address;
• examining a look-up table at the second LSN appliance to determine the owner appliance based on the public IP address;
• routing the response to the owner appliance from the second LSN appliance;
• and
• forwarding the response along with the private IP address from the owner LSN appliance to the router.

A computer program product stored on a computer readable storage medium and deployable to each of a plurality of large scale network address translation (LSN) appliances to process packets between a router and a transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) network, the computer program product comprising:

• program code that implements a hash function to determine an owner appliance from the plurality of LSN appliances based on a private IP address of a request received from the router;
• program code that implements a look-up table to determine the owner appliance from the plurality of LSN appliances based on a public IP address of a response received from the TCP/IP network;
• and
• program code that forwards a received request or a received response to the owner appliance.