Patent ID: 7979414

Claim:
A method for processing a search request message received over a network, the method comprising: computing a threshold value in accordance with the search request message, the threshold value being computed based on one or more values in one or more fields of the search request message, the one or more fields including at least one of: a result rank field, a result count field, a maximum result field, a hop count, or a time to live field, wherein the computing comprises: increasing a value in the time to live field by one to generate a first value; dividing a maximum time to live of the search request message by the first value to obtain a second value; subtracting the second value from a value in the results rank field to generate a third value; and increasing the third value by one to produce the threshold value; and returning at least one search result to a user in response to the search request message, if a rank of the at least one search result at least meets the threshold value.