Patent ID: 8135386

Claim:
A method for use in a communications network, comprising: creating an Instance Identifier (ID) to uniquely identify a device such as a mobile device or User Equipment (UE) in the communications network, wherein the Instance Identifier (ID) is constructed as a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) Uniform Resource Name (URN) using a string representation of a UUID, and the creating the Instance Identifier (ID) further comprises creating a device ID (DevID), wherein the creating the DevID further comprises extracting a Type Allocation Code (TAC) and a Serial Number (SNR) from an International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI), wherein when using the TAC and SNR, omitting a spare digit for a total of 14 digits, placing a name space ID and DevID in network byte order, concatenating the name space ID and DevID, computing a hash of the concatenated name space ID and DevID using a pre-selected hash algorithm, setting the UUID using the hash, creating the string representation of the UUID, and placing the string representation in URN form by pre-pending “urn:uuid” to the string representation.