One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for facilitating custodian-based routing. During operation, the system receives, at a computing device, a request for a piece of content from a user, and determines whether the content is available locally. In response to the content not being available locally, the system identifies a remote custodian device that stores the content. The custodian device is not identified by its physical address. The system then identifies a communication endpoint associated with the identified custodian device, and maps a physical address corresponding to the identified communication endpoint. The system establishes a connection to the communication endpoint using the mapped physical address to obtain the requested content.