Patent ID: 8924304

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: initiating a collaborative application on a system; obtaining a unique identifier from memory of the system; performing a hash function on the unique identifier for the system in a non-reversible manner to protect the unique identifier from being revealed to other systems in a network and to generate a unique hash identifier for the system; broadcasting packets that include the unique hash identifier from the system to at least one other system in the network that has initiated the collaborative application; and determining when the system has received packets that include unique hash identifiers and status information from all systems in the network that have initiated the collaborative application, wherein a packet of the system includes status information including an identification field having the unique hash identifier of the system, a first field that indicates a number of systems in the network that the system has received packets from, and a second field that indicates a number of systems in the network that a different system has received packets from upon initiation of the collaborative application; and sorting based on the packet of the system the unique hash identifiers of the systems in the network to assign a relative reference value for each system in the network.