A method (500), a system and a gateway (400) for communicating between
hosts in private networks having IPv4 address spaces are disclosed. One
or more DNS query messages for resolving resource records are transmitted
(502) from a first private network for a remote host in a second private
network. One or more DNS replies comprising a private IPv4 address for
the remote host are received (504). If the one or more DNS replies
comprise a synthesized IPv6 address, the IPv6 address is extracted from
the replies and a peer IPv4 address in the first network is allocated for
the remote host (508). The IPv6 address comprises a global IPv6 prefix
and the private IPv4 address for the remote host. The peer IPv4 address
is associated with an extracted IPv6 address for the remote host. The
remote host is addressed using the IPv6 address for transmission of IPv4
packets from the first network addressed using the peer IPv4 address
(510). The system comprises an application-level gateway of a domain name
system (DNS-ALG), a virtual table, and a translator. The gateway
comprises the foregoing system and a domain name system (DNS) server.