Patent ID: 7533188

Claim:
A method for staggering one or more scheduled common actions to be performed on a predetermined number of addressable devices that form a group within a network, comprising: determining a length of a time period over which to perform each of the one or more scheduled common actions on the predetermined number of addressable devices in the group; dividing the length of the time period by the predetermined number of addressable devices in the group to determine a timeslot length; determining a unique characteristic associated with each of the addressable devices in the group and further determining a common characteristic associated with the network, wherein the unique characteristic comprises an Internet Protocol (IP) address and wherein the common characteristic comprises a subnet address; performing, for each addressable device in the group, a logical AND operation between the IP address of the addressable device and a complement of the subnet address, wherein the logical AND operation between the IP address and the complement of the subnet address results in a unique timeslot number for the addressable device; and determining, for each addressable device in the group, a unique start time for commencing the one or more scheduled actions on the addressable device, wherein determining the unique start time for each addressable device in the group comprises: multiplying the unique timeslot number for the addressable device by the timeslot length to derive an offset time for the addressable device; and adding the offset time for the addressable device to a beginning of the time period to determine the unique start time for the addressable device.