Patent ID: 7921218

Claim:
A method of generating a signature for a space using networked resources in the space, comprising: employing a processor for discovering resources in the space; providing a universally unique identifier (UUID) for every resource in the space; generating a signature for the space using identifications of the set of discovered resources by generating an ordered list of the hash values of each UUID of selected reachable resources and a hash value of all the UUIDs; verifying that a previously set of discovered resources remain in the space, wherein verifying comprises one of: periodically verifying that a previously set of discovered resources remain in the space, and based on an event, verifying that a previously set of discovered resources remain in the space; updating the set of discovered resources as necessary based on the verification; and if the set of discovered resources is different than resources in the signature for the space, then generating an updated signature for the space based on the identification of the resources in the updated set; wherein the signature includes information based on a range of reachable resources which is used for distinguishing a size of a space.