Patent ID: 7644167

Claim:
A method of identifying at least one service node in a network to provide a desired service for a first node in the network, the method comprising: receiving a request from the first node for a service node configured to provide a desired service, wherein the first node identifies a node to receive the request using location information for the first node; and identifying at least one service node configured to provide the desired service based at least on the location information for the first node, wherein identifying at least one service node configured to provide the desired service further includes determining whether the at least one service node includes a plurality of service nodes; in response to the at least one service node including a plurality of service nodes, applying a clustering algorithm to identify one or more of the closest service nodes of the plurality service nodes; ranking the plurality of service nodes based on the applying of the clustering algorithm; and selecting one of the plurality of service nodes to provide the desired service based on available bandwidth for the one service node being greater than a minimum bandwidth required for providing the service and the one service node being one of the closest service nodes to the first node of the plurality of service nodes.