Patent ID: 7616632

Claim:
A method for providing a communication path between communication units (CUs) of a general packet communications network, comprising: providing a first CU a and a second CU b having an existing communications relationship R ab between the first CU a and the second CU b including a first hierarchical forwarding path HFP ab between CU a and CU b , wherein CU b is a rendezvous point selected by CU a based on at least one relational attribute associated with CU b , and wherein CU b includes a trigger that includes an identifier and HFP ab ; providing a third CU c having an existing communications relationship R bc between the second CU b and the third CU c including a second hierarchical forwarding path HFP bc between CU b and CU c , wherein CU c provides a service associated with the identifier and maps the identifier to HFP bc ; constructing a communications relationship R ac , by CU b , between the CU a and the CU c including establishing a hierarchical forwarding path HFP ac between the CU a and the CU c and through the CU b ; defining an exploring region within the general packet communications network between the first communication unit CU a and the third communication unit CU c , wherein the exploring region is defined by a group of CUs in which the CUs within the group can communicate with one another independent of communications relationship R ac ; and wherein the exploring region has first and second CUs in which there is a direct communication path between the two units and at least one third CU between the two CUs, wherein there is a first lower layer HFP between the first CU and the second CU and a second lower layer HFP between the second CU and the third CU, and wherein the first lower layer HFP and the second lower layer HFP are concatenated to create a higher layer HFP.