Patent ID: 8649296

Claim:
A method for disseminating messages in a network comprising a plurality of computer nodes connected through a plurality of network devices, wherein said network is represented by a logical overlay of a plurality of overlay links comprising direct logical paths between said computing nodes and a multicast tree embedded in said overlay, said tree comprising a plurality of tree links from one root node of said plurality of computing nodes to each other of said plurality of computing nodes including at least some of said overlay links, said method comprising the steps of: each node identifying a plurality of neighbor nodes comprising at least one tree neighbor logically connected to said each node by a tree link and at least one overlay neighbor logically connected to said node by an overlay link that is not a tree link; upon detection of a message at said each node, said each node multicasting each said message to the at least one tree neighbor and saving a message ID for each said multicast message; and said each node periodically sending a gossip comprising the message ID for each said multicast message to said at least one overlay neighbor.