The present invention advantageously provides a system and method for remotely administering and synchronizing a clustered group of access control nodes using a gateway node. A device, such as a network browser, submits an update for one node of the cluster of nodes to a web server in the gateway node. The web server transmits, via a communication interface in the gateway node, the submitted update to the node configuration database of the appropriate node while the gateway updates its configuration database in accordance with the submitted update. In another embodiment, the device is a dedicated host computer. The data can be transmitted in accordance with a binary access protocol.