A method and apparatus for facilitating Internet Security Protocol (IPsec)
communications through devices that employ address translation in a
telecommunications network is disclosed. A device that employs address
translation, such as a router using Network Address Translation (NAT),
receives IPsec based messages from originator nodes in a network and
generates a result value for each message based on an initial identifier
for each message. The messages are sent to a responder node that
generates a response message to each originator node with a subsequent
identifier that is based on the corresponding initial identifier. The
device matches each response messages to the appropriate originator node
within the network based on the result values and the subsequent
identifiers. For example, the initial identifiers may be originator
Security Parameter Indexes (SPI), and the subsequent identifiers may be
responder SPI's that are each based on a hash value of the corresponding
originator SPI.