Patent ID: 7536465

Claim:
A method performed in a peer-to-peer network in which peers store resources and peers serve resources to other peers, and where a peer that needs a resource communicates with a resource naming system (RNS) comprising a hierarchical arrangement of RNS servers that together track names of which resources are available on which peers, where a peer looking up a resource sends the resource's name to a home RNS server to which the peer is assigned, and if the home RNS server does not know a peer location of the resource then the name of the resource is passed up the hierarchy of RNS servers until an RNS server returns the identity of a peer that has the resource, the method comprising: receiving a registration request at a peer registrar, said registration request being received from a peer device through a networking environment, and in response the peer registrar determining a unique identifier for the peer device, said unique identifier being unique within the peer-to-peer network, said peer-to-peer network connecting with the peer registrar, a plurality of RNS servers, and a plurality of additional peer devices, said unique identifier to be used to identify peer resources within the peer-to-peer network that are under the control of the peer device; further responding to the registration request by assigning a home RNS server for the peer device within the peer-to-peer network, said home RNS server to serve the peer device with locations of peer resources within the peer-to-peer network to enable the peer device to access the peer resources from respective ones of the plurality of additional peer devices, wherein different peers in the peer-to-peer network are assigned to different home RNS servers; and in reply to the registration request, returning the unique identifier and a network location for the home RNS server to the peer device.