Patent ID: 8219665

Claim:
A computing device, comprising: a memory, a processing unit, and computer-executable instructions stored on the memory, the computer-executable instructions being executable by the processing unit to: connect the computing device to a network configured for communication between multiple voting computing devices; responsive to connecting the computing device to the network, automatically initiate: monitoring of transmissions on the network between the multiple voting computing devices; determining of communication protocols used in the transmissions between the multiple voting computing devices; automatic enabling of the computing device to communicate using one or more of the communication protocols once the communication protocols have been determined; obtain, using the one or more communication protocols, information from the multiple voting computing devices for network settings and network resources used by the multiple voting computing devices; store the obtained information as entries in a data structure; weight the entries in the data structure to determine popularities of the entries, wherein an entry is weighted based on a measure of similarity indicative of device configuration similarities between the computing device and a respective voting computing device of the multiple voting computing devices that corresponds to the entry and a measure of proximity within the network between the computing device and the respective voting computing device of the multiple voting computing devices; and automatically configure the computing device to use particular network settings or particular network resources based on the popularities of the entries.