Patent ID: 8023421

Claim:
A method of populating a plurality of one or more groups with a plurality of one or more network addresses, the method comprising: selecting a plurality of one or more metrics, the plurality of the one or more metrics including statistical similarity and one or more of path performance, network cost, network usage, geographical proximity, and topological proximity; creating the plurality of one or more groups in one or more network devices, the network devices including one or more of servers, forwarding devices, and routing devices; populating each of the plurality of one or more groups with a subset of the plurality of one or more network addresses based on at least a classification function, the classification function at least partly determined by the selected plurality of one or more metrics; and including one or more network addresses from one or more groups of the plurality of one or more groups in a plurality of one or more routing tables distributed across the internetwork; wherein the at least the classification function includes a plurality of one or more criteria, the plurality of one or more criteria including topological proximity and administrative policy, wherein the topological proximity includes one or more of adjacency and dependency, and the administrative policy includes one or more of address aggregation and user-defined policy.