Patent ID: 7197565

Claim:
A system, comprising: a plurality of peer nodes configured to participate with each other in a peer-to-peer network on a network; one of the peer nodes configured to generate a unique identifier for a peer-to-peer network entity on the peer node, wherein the entity is a peer-to-peer network user identity; wherein the one of the peer nodes is further configured to generate a pipe advertisement describing the entity and the pipe and corresponding to the unique identifier of the entity; wherein one or more others of the plurality of peer nodes are configured to host one or more instances of the entity corresponding to the unique identifier; and wherein at least one of the plurality of peer nodes is configured to: obtain the unique identifier for the entity; discover the one or more instances of the entity corresponding to the unique identifier on the one or more others of the plurality of peer nodes; and connect to one of the one or more instances of the entity via a pipe, wherein the pipe represents a virtual communications channel in the network for communicating with the one or more instances of the entity.