Patent ID: 7236575

Claim:
A method for trading IP bandwidth in an exchange system comprising a trading server and a trading arbiter connected to a trading switch, said method comprising the steps of: a. registering one or more destination network parameters of each member's network with a trade route registry, accessible by the trading arbiter, in order to facilitate the identification of a member's routes. b. receiving, at the trading server, buy orders and sell orders from respective buying and selling members for IP bandwidth and storing the buy orders and sell orders in an order database, each of the orders including a destination network parameter; c. matching buy and sell orders based on the destination network parameter and generating a list of one or more matched buy and sell orders as a trading result; and d. communicating by the trading server the trading result to the matched buying and selling member networks using border gateway protocol announcements so that said matched buying and selling member networks may configure their routes between the matched buying and selling members.