A method of avoiding cache corruption when establishing a network connection includes the steps of transmitting a request to a computing device, where the request includes a masquerade layer-3 address, and receiving a reply transmitted by the computing device in response to the request, where the reply includes a MAC address associated with the computing device. Since the masquerade layer-3 address is unique relative to the computer network, computing devices within the network do no overwrite existing layer-3-to-MAC relationships in their respective caches with the layer-3-to-MAC relationship reflected in the request. Thus, the method enables a network connection to be initiated between two computing devices in the same computer network while avoiding neighbor cache pollution on other computing devices in that network.