Patent ID: 7177867

Claim:
A method for facilitating access to a plurality of resources distributed across an electronic network comprising a plurality of interconnected server nodes, each of the resources being associated with at least one corresponding server node, said method comprising the steps of: a) assigning to each of the server nodes membership in at least one of a plurality of announce sets, each of said plurality of announce sets comprising two or more of said server nodes who advertise an availablity of associated resources to each other; b) assigning to each of the server nodes membership in at least one of a plurality of request sets, each of said plurality of request sets comprising two or more of said server nodes who query each other for an availability of one or more associated resources, where each of the request sets intersects with at least one of the announce sets thereby forming a logical grid; c) receiving a join request from a new server node for joining the network by a member server node of the network; and d) applying information stored within said member server node to determine how said new server node will be assigned membership to said network.