Patent ID: 7336623

Claim:
A method for detecting and repairing a cloud partition in a network, wherein a cloud includes a plurality of nodes, each node having a peer identifier (ID) and a cache of peer IDs for one or more known nodes, the method comprising: requesting identification information for an adjacent node from a server node; receiving identification information for a closest-match node that is a closest found match for the adjacent node, and if a peer ID for the closest-match node is not in the cache, determining that the cloud is partitioned, and sending a repair message to a known node indicating the identification information for the closest-match node, and wherein the cache is a multilevel cache, and wherein a host node records an entry for a known node in a level of the multilevel cache in accordance with a distance between a peer ID of the known node and a peer ID of the host node, and wherein entries for known nodes closest to the host node are recorded in a lowest level of the cache, than flooding the identification information of the host node to the closest-match node and of the closest-match node to nodes having entries in the lowest cache level; and further determining that the closest-match node is in a larger partition when the closest-match node is closer than every node in the cache, and sending each node in a top level of the cache a repair message including a peer ID and an address for a node in the larger partition, and a repair level indicating repair is required for a cache level immediately below the top level.