Patent ID: 8140625

Claim:
A method of operation of a first physical node in a peer to peer network comprising a plurality of physical nodes, each having a plurality of storage slots, comprising: logically associating a set of components as a virtual node by assigning the same fixed-size hash-key prefix to the set of components such that fragments of an object associated with a hash-key, which is derived by applying a hash function to the object, that matches the hash-key prefix are distributively stored in storage slots of different physical nodes on which the set of components are hosted; receiving at the first physical node a message comprising identification information indicative of a version of a given component hosted on a second physical node and included in the set of components; determining a relative age of the given component based on the identification information; and if the version of the given component hosted on the second physical node is newer than a version of the given component hosted on the first physical node, storing the identification information as a component skeleton at a storage slot on the first physical node.