Patent attributes
Peer-to-peer networks may be established by considering various characteristics of the peers when clustering the peers within the network. The characteristics may include operational criteria such as the cost of data transfer by each peer, the type and status of power being supplied to each peer, and the bandwidth available to each peer. The peer-to-peer networks may be established by requiring credentials to gain access to the peer-to-peer network, where those credentials may be a network access identifier that has previously been used to gain access to an underlying data network of the peer-to-peer network. The operational criteria used to select peers for clustering may be stored and accessed through association to the credentials used to gain access to the peer-to-peer network.
