Patent ID: 8295295

Claim:
A system for automatically segmenting and merging routing domains within a network, comprising: a plurality of gateway devices; and a plurality of nodes self-segmented into one or more routing domains in which: each of said plurality of nodes dynamically selects a single gateway device from among said plurality of gateway devices as the node's primary gateway at any time; each of said gateway devices possesses a gateway color attribute, in which the value of the said gateway color attribute is unique for each gateway; each of said plurality of nodes maintains a node color attribute value whose value is automatically derived from the value of said gateway color attribute of the node's primary gateway that is determined through direct connectivity to the gateway or through other nodes connected to the gateway; and each node's routing domain is determined by the node's color attribute value, wherein a first node changes its selection from a first gateway device to a second gateway device based on the number of nodes associated with the first gateway device exceeding a threshold; the first node automatically derives a new color attribute value from a color attribute value of the second gateway; the first node, after changing its selection to the second gateway device, updates a local routing table to remove entries not associated with the second gateway device; and the first node, after updating the local routing table, conveying the updated local routing table to least one other node.