Patent ID: 7596618

Claim:
A method of splitting a workload of a node of a plurality of nodes in a peer-to-peer net-work, and the plurality of nodes in the peer-to-peer network are information service nodes operable to store information for services provided by service nodes different from the information service nodes in the peer-to-peer network, the method comprising: receiving a request at the node having a workload determined to be in a set of highest workloads for the plurality of nodes in a peer-to-peer network; and splitting the workload of the node with a second node of the plurality of nodes in the peer-to-peer network using a splitting algorithm, wherein each of the information service nodes is responsible for a different attribute subspace, each attribute subspace being associated with an attribute and range of attribute values describing at least one of the services, and each information service node stores information for a service of the services if an attribute value describing the service is in the range of attribute values for the attribute subspace of the information service node.