Patent ID: 8954569
Filing Date: 2015-02-10
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A gateway that retrieves a user identity and connects a local network to a service provider network associated with the user identity, the gateway configured to perform operations comprising: maintaining gateway information representing a group of gateways that include the gateway and other gateways that retrieve other user identities and connect other local networks to other service provider networks associated with the other user identities; subscribing to other gateway information maintained by the other gateways, and subscribes to subscriber information maintained by an application server in the service provider network, wherein the subscriber information represents gateways that are subscribing to the gateway information; receiving the other gateway information to which the gateway is subscribed, and receiving the subscriber information to which the gateway is subscribed; detecting in the received subscriber information, a new gateway that is not included in the group, prompting a user of the gateway to permit an addition of the new gateway to the group, after detecting the new gateway, and modifying the gateway information such that the new gateway is included in the group in response to an instruction by the user of the gateway to permit the addition of the new gateway to the group; replacing content of the gateway information with content of the other gateway information received; informing the application server of change in the gateway information; maintaining topology information representing a directed graph between the gateways included in the group, wherein the directed graph is configured such that every gateway has a path to every other gateway, wherein the gateway does not subscribe to gateway information maintained by a given gateway if the gateway does not have a direct path to the given gateway in the directed graph; modifying, when the new gateway is included in the group, the topology information such that every gateway, including the new gateway, has a path to every other gateway, including the new gateway, in the directed graph, and sending the modified topology information to the application server; receiving other topology information from the other application servers; and replacing the topology information with the other topology information received.