Patent ID: 7349392

Claim:
A method of allocating Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to a customer of an Internet Data Center (IDC), comprising: a) receiving at least one customer requested subnet associated with said customer, each customer requested subnet having a requested address size; b) selecting one of a plurality of core subnets in a network address space of said IDC, each core subnet partitioned into a plurality of top-level subnets, each top-level subnet partitioned into one or more predefined subnets; c) determining an address demand value based on said requested address size of each customer requested subnet, wherein said determining of said address demand value includes: for each customer requested subnet, determining an adjusted address size using said requested address size and a first expansion factor; adding each adjusted address size to generate an unadjusted address demand value; generating said address demand value using said unadjusted address demand value and a second expansion factor; d) selecting a particular predefined subnet having a plurality of unassigned IP addresses of said selected core subnet based on said address demand value; and e) for each customer requested subnet, assigning a subnet and a corresponding IP address size using said particular predefined subnet.