A system and method for automatically discovering accessible services on a
computer network and providing automatic access thereto. In particular, a
gateway server is provided which periodically scans a building network for
available network services and publishes links to the available network
services over the Internet. Advantageously, a scanning engine of the
gateway server periodically attempts to open a connection, or socket, with
the port associated with each service to determine the availability of
that service. The scanning engine initiates a second exchange with the
port to validate the availability of the particular network service if the
attempt to establish a connection with the port was successful. The
scanning engine then creates a list of the identified accessible services.
The list of accessible services may be configured as dynamic links on a
gateway server web page to allow access to the identified network services
from an outside network, via the dynamic links.
