Patent ID: 8650259

Claim:
In a peer-to-peer network comprising a plurality of nodes, a method for increasing a search space in the network comprising steps of: receiving a search request message at a peer node within said peer-to-peer network, said search request message including a time-to-live value; decrementing the time-to-live at every peer node receiving the search request message; incrementing the time-to-live value in the message at an edge node where the time-to-live value of the message becomes zero; and forwarding the message to at least one other peer node that has not received the message, wherein said incrementing and said forwarding increase a number of edge nodes, thereby expanding said search space in said peer-to-peer network; retrieving from the message a count of the number of nodes along the message's path that have responded to the request before forwarding the message to the at least one peer node; and comparing that count with a threshold, the threshold being different from the time-to-live value; and increasing the time-to-live value in the message if the count is below the threshold.