Patent ID: 7814180

Claim:
A method of providing an IP address for a host in a computer network, the method comprising the steps of: receiving, from a client in a computer network, at an appliance a request for an IP address associated with a domain name associated with a zone; retrieving the requested IP address from an object oriented database associated with the appliance; and transmitting the retrieved IP address to the client; wherein: the object oriented database comprises a zone object tree that includes a plurality 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 zone and sub-zone are associated with a logically hierarchical set of zone information; the object oriented database comprises a network object tree that includes a logically hierarchical set of network objects each associated with a numerical sub-network designation, wherein the logically hierarchical set of network objects corresponds to the IP address associated with a host object; and the zone object tree and the network object tree are linked via the host object that 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.