Patent ID: 7454520

Claim:
A method of generating a new routing table for a new peer in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, the P2P network includes a plurality of zones, wherein each zone is represented by a peer of the P2P network, comprising: detecting said new peer joining in a zone of a host peer in the P2P network; determining a current zone of said new peer and a current zone of the host peer; forwarding a routing table of the host peer to said new peer and entries in the routing table are organized in a hierarchy of levels, wherein the forwarded routing table excludes a current table entry of the host peer; setting the new routing table for said new peer as the forwarded routing table of the host peer and an addition of a current table entry in the new routing table, the current table entry in the new routing table is based on the determined current zone of said new peer; comparing the current zone of said new peer with a target zone, the target zone is chosen as a first zone divided by an expressway span K, wherein the first zone is identified from a routing table entry one routing level immediately above a routing level of the current table entry in the hierarchy of the routing table of the host peer, and the expressway span K is a span between zone representatives of zones in the one routing level immediately above the routing level of the current table entry in the hierarchy of the routing table of the host peer; responsive to the comparing that indicates the current zone of said new peer being one of smaller than and equal to said target zone, moving the current table entry down in the new routing table down one routing level to make room for a new current table entry for said new peer, determining a new current zone for said new peer and associating the new current routing table entry with the new current zone for said new peer.