Patent ID: 7200667

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a resource request at a gate server to a resource locator service from a requester device through a networking environment, said resource request to request access to a peer resource associated with the resource locator service; determining if the requester is a peer device; if the requester is a peer device, returning one or more locations within the networking environment where the peer resource is expected to be accessible to the peer device: wherein the resource locator service further comprises a registrar and a plurality of resource naming service (RNS) servers; said registrar to track peer devices registered with the resource locator service and to assign each registered peer device to a particular RNS server, each of said RNS servers to track peer resources published by peer devices assigned to the respective RNS server and to service requests from the peer devices assigned to the respective RNS server for peer resources published by registered peer devices, and said gate server to service requests for peer resources that are published by registered peer devices but received from requesters that are not registered devices; wherein returning the locations within the networking environment where the peer resource is expected to be accessible comprises: determining that a location of an RNS server for a master publisher of the peer resource was previously cached by the gate server; requesting and receiving the locations for the peer resource from the RNS server for the master publisher based on the cached location; and providing the locations for the peer resource received from the RNS server for the master publisher.