Patent ID: 7408882

Claim:
A system for automatically discovering nodes on a network comprising: announcer logic configured to transmit a first announcement packet to all known nodes having a static type in a list of known nodes, the first announcement packet comprising a node address and a forward counter associated with each known node in the list having a corresponding forward count greater than zero, the forward counter initialized from the corresponding forward count; listener logic configured to receive a second announcement packet comprising a node address and a forward counter, the listener logic further configured to add to the list of known nodes a received node having a discovered type, the received node associated with the node address and a corresponding forward count defined by the decremented forward counter; and forwarder logic configured to transmit a third announcement packet to all known nodes in the list of known nodes when the forward count associated with the received node is greater than zero, the third announcement packet comprising the node address associated with the received node and a forward counter initialized from the forward count corresponding to the received node.