Patent ID: 7430614

Claim:
A method performed by a network clement, comprising: in response to a request for a first IP address received from a first client at an interface of the network clement over an access network, assigning the first client an IP address from a first block of IP addresses dynamically allocated from an IP address provider separated from a pool of statically preassigned IP addresses, if there is no IP address remained unassigned in the pool of statically preassigned IP addresses specifically allocated to the interface, wherein the network element comprises a plurality of interfaces, each interface being associated with a plurality of clients coupled over the access network, wherein each interface is statically allocated with a predetermined range of globally unique IP addresses that can be assigned to any of the clients associated with each interface, and wherein a block of IP addresses is dynamically allocated as a logical interface of a last resort only if there is no statically preassigned IP address corresponding to particular interface available; and advertising reachability information in a network with respect to the first block of the IP addresses dynamically allocated from the IP address provider, such that other entities of the network are aware of the first block of the IP addresses.