Patent ID: 7873655
Filing Date: 2011-01-18
Classification: G06F,H04L

Abstract:
1. A system for automating communications between two or more computing devices, comprising: generating a query request message comprising a request for information on a first computing device; wherein the query request message specifies a forwarding recursion level, said forwarding recursion level providing a maximum number of peer levels to which the query request message may be forwarded if that query request message is unanswerable by any computing device receiving the query request message; transmitting the query request message from the first computing device to at least one additional computing device comprising a first peer level; on any computing device that receives the transmitted query request message; automatically evaluating the query request message to determine whether the additional computing device can respond to the query request message from locally accessible data, automatically preparing a query response message including the information requested by the query request message if that information is locally accessible, and automatically transmitting the query response message to the first computing device, automatically forwarding the query request message to one or more further computing devices comprising a subsequent peer level when the information requested by the query request message is not locally accessible, and wherein further computing devices in subsequent peer levels will continue to forward the query request message to one or more further computing devices comprising further subsequent peer levels when the information requested by the query request message is not locally accessible until such time as the recursion level representing the maximum number of peer levels has been reached; on the first computing device, automatically receiving the query response messages transmitted from any computing device; using one or more of the additional computing devices to send at least one reply information request to any of the first computing device and the other additional computing devices in response to the query request message; and wherein any of the first computing device and the other additional computing devices receiving one or more reply information requests responds to the reply information requests by transmitting any corresponding locally accessible information to the computing device that sent the reply information request.