Patent ID: 8432917

Claim:
A method for execution in a peer-to-peer hybrid network comprising: performing, by the first endpoint, an authentication process with an access server to gain access to network information needed to communicate within the peer-to-peer hybrid network, wherein the authentication process presents unique user authentication information by the first endpoint to the access server and associates the first endpoint with the unique user authentication information within the network; receiving, by the first endpoint, a profile and a routing table from the access server in response to the authentication process, wherein the profile is uniquely associated with the unique user authentication information by the access server, and wherein the profile identifies second and third endpoints as endpoints with which the first endpoint has permission to communicate and identifies a status of the second and third endpoints as online, and the routing table contains first address information needed for the first endpoint to communicate directly with the second endpoint and second address information needed for the first endpoint to communicate directly with the third endpoint; determining, by the first endpoint, that the unique user authentication information is concurrently associated with the second endpoint, whereby the second endpoint previously presented the unique user authentication information to the access server in order to log in to the network; identifying, by the first endpoint, the first endpoint as a master endpoint corresponding to the unique user authentication information and the second endpoint as a slave endpoint corresponding to the unique user authentication information; sending, by the first endpoint, a first message directly to the second endpoint to notify the second endpoint that the first endpoint is logged into the network using the unique user authentication information and that the first endpoint is the master endpoint; and sending, by the first endpoint, a second message directly to the third endpoint to notify the third endpoint that the first endpoint is logged into the network and that communications sent from the third endpoint to a user of the first and second endpoints should be sent to the first endpoint only.