Patent ID: 7680044

Claim:
A method for managing traffic within a peer-to-peer network, the method being implemented by a node within the peer-to-peer network, the method comprising: defining one or more congestion events that imply congestion on the peer-to-peer network, the one or more congestion events being defined to include either sending or receiving a multicast request; defining one or more non-congestion events that imply a lack of congestion on the peer-to-peer network, the one or more non-congestion events being defined to include either sending or receiving a multicast request; receiving a multicast request and a responder list that is associated with the multicast request, wherein the multicast request is a request for data or a request for a service; determining whether the node provides the data or the service; sending a response if the node provides the data or the service and if the node is not on the responder list and not sending a response if the node does not provide the data or the service or if the node is on the responder list; increasing spacing of connectionless protocol packets that are sent by the node in response to detecting one or more of the defined congestion events; and decreasing the spacing of connectionless protocol packets that are sent by the node in response to detecting one or more of the defined non-congestion events.