Patent ID: 7362718

Claim:
At a current node in a federating infrastructure, a method for the current node to maintain membership within the federation infrastructure, the method comprising: an act of sending a first ping message to a neighborhood node, the first ping message indicating to the neighborhood node the current node is participating as a neighbor of the neighborhood node and including routing partner and neighborhood nodes' state of the current node; an act of receiving a second ping message from a neighborhood node, the second ping message indicating to the current node at least that the neighborhood node originating the second ping message is participating as a neighbor of the current node and including routing partner and neighborhood nodes' state of the originating neighborhood node; an act of proximally routing an update request message to a processing routing node, the update request message indicating to the processing routing node that the current node is participating as a routing partner of the routing node and including at least the current node's neighborhood nodes' identities; and an act of receiving an update response message from the processing routing node, the update response indicating to the current node that the processing routing node is participating as a routing partner of the current node and including at least the processing routing partner's neighborhood nodes' identities.