Patent ID: 7515544

Claim:
A system for identifying an optimal route in a network, comprising: a destination node having an associated node address; a source node having an associated node address; and a plurality of intermediate nodes each having an associated node address, the plurality of intermediate nodes including a plurality of neighboring nodes associated with the source node; wherein the node addresses associated respectively with the destination node and the plurality of intermediate nodes include location information associated respectively with the destination node and the plurality of intermediate nodes; wherein the source node is configured to select one or more of the plurality of neighboring nodes to receive a route request, the selection of the selected one or more neighboring nodes being based on the location information associated with the destination node and the selected one or more neighboring nodes; wherein one or more of the selected one or more neighboring nodes propagate their route requests received from the source node to the destination node along one or more routes, each of the one or more routes including one or more of the plurality of intermediate nodes; and wherein the destination node is configured to: receive the route requests propagated by one or more of the selected one or more neighboring nodes, the route requests respectively identifying the one or more routes; and select the optimal route from the one or more routes based on the received route requests.