Patent ID: 8171147

Claim:
An article comprising: a storage device comprising machine-readable instructions which, if executed on a computing device, are adapted to provide an application programming interface comprising one or more procedures to: obtain, at said computing device, a network address of a server; establish a first session to said server based on the obtained network address; and establish, by said application programming interface on said computing device, a second session to a peer device based on information received by said application programming interface from said server, wherein said second session bypasses said server, and wherein said information from said server is received in response to the providing said server a name associated with said peer device; and receive information from said application programming interface, said information at least in part identifying one or more communication parameters associated with said peer device, wherein an application program executed by said computing device communicates one or more files and/or messages with said peer device via said second session through said application programming interface and considers said first session and said second session to be provided by a single connection.