Patent ID: 6879564

Claim:
A method for designating communication paths for transmitting data in a computer network, the computer network having a plurality of computers that are the intended recipients of the data and one or more computers that are intermediaries with respect to the data, the method comprising: for each intermediary computer, determining which recipient computer of the plurality of recipient computers to which it is most optimal for the intermediary computer to communicate and grouping the intermediary computer with the determined recipient computer, thereby creating a plurality of groups; identifying one or more inter-group communication paths through the network that connect two or more groups of the plurality of groups; creating a representation of the network having a plurality of communication paths, in which the intermediary computers are replaced with the inter-group communication paths, such that the inter-group communication paths pass directly through the locations occupied by the intermediary computers; and, designating the most optimal communication paths on the created network representation as being the paths over which the data is to be transmitted.