Patent ID: 8285823

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, from a client in a computer network, a request to provide an IP address associated with a domain name, wherein the domain name is associated with a zone; retrieving the IP address from a data store; and transmitting the retrieved IP address to the client; wherein: the data store comprises a set of zone objects including a first zone object associated with the zone, wherein the first zone object is linked to a second zone object associated with a sub-zone of the zone; the data store comprises a set of network objects including a logically hierarchical subset of network objects each associated with a numerical sub-network designation, wherein the logically hierarchical subset of network objects corresponds to the IP address associated with a host object; and the set of zone objects are associated with the set of network objects, and the host object is associated with the domain name and the IP address, wherein the host object is stored with a first attribute corresponding to a first sub-zone of the domain name and a second attribute corresponding to a first numerical sub-network designation of the IP address.