Patent ID: 8275912

Claim:
A computing system for managing a bootstrap phase in a shared-trust federation for associating a plurality of computing devices, the plurality of computing devices including seed nodes and non-seed nodes, wherein the computing system comprises: a computing device configured as a first seed node of the plurality of computing devices and having a memory and a processor, wherein the computing device is configured to: receive a super ticket from at least one other seed node of the plurality of seed nodes, wherein each seed node of the plurality of seed nodes has a super ticket associated therewith; make a first determination, the first determination being a determination that the first seed node has received the super tickets associated with at least of quorum of the plurality of seed nodes; make a second determination, the second determination being a determination that any global tickets issued for any of the seed nodes have expired, wherein each global ticket indicates an authorization of a corresponding seed node for a node holding that global ticket to associate with the federation during a validity period of that global ticket; and in response to the first and second determinations, transmit to each of the other seed nodes, an instruction to leave the bootstrap phase such that exactly one association of nodes is formable at any one time.