Patent ID: 7656822

Claim:
A network computing system, comprising: a network comprising a plurality of subnetworks, each subnetwork comprising multiple nodes and one or more resources, wherein two or more of the subnetworks implement different resource description and discovery protocols within the subnetworks, wherein each resource description and discovery protocol is configured to generate resource descriptions in a format specific to that resource description and discovery protocol; a node on one of the subnetworks, configured to: discover one or more of the resources on the subnetworks; generate advertisements in a uniform description format for the discovered resources, wherein each advertisement includes information describing an associated resource, wherein to generate advertisements in a uniform description format for the discovered resources, the node on one of the subnetworks is configured to translate resource descriptions in formats specific to the different resource description and discovery protocols into the uniform description format; and publish the advertisements in the uniform description format on the network for discovery by the nodes on the subnetworks, wherein the nodes are each configured to read resource descriptions in the uniform description format from discovered advertisements; wherein each advertisement comprises a universal unique identifier that uniquely identifies the associated resource on the network, and further wherein, to generate advertisements in a uniform description format for the discovered resources, the node on one of the subnetworks is configured to: if a discovered resource provides a universal unique identifier, use the provided universal unique identifier in the generated advertisement for the resource; if the discovered resource does not provide a universal unique identifier, generate a universal unique identifier for the resource.