Patent ID: 7383209

Claim:
A method of connecting a plurality of computers over a computer network for data transfer amongst the computers, comprising the steps of: a) using a computer input device associated with a requesting computer of the plurality of computers to automatically machine-read a data carrier modulated with an index; b) the requesting computer communicating with routing computers in the plurality of computers, said routing computers each having a table stored in memory, each table comprising a plurality of records, each of said records comprising at least part of an association of an index to a pointer which identifies an information computer on the network, by transmitting said machine-read index to at least one of said routing computers and receiving pointer information from said routing computers that correlates the machine-read index to a pointer which identifies an information computer on the network; c) the requesting computer using the pointer information received from said routing computers to establish communication with the information computer identified thereby and request information from said information computer; and d) the information computer transmitting information to the requesting computer based on the information request.