I also, together with a number of my colleagues at M.I.T., developed Chord, one of the four original distributed hash tables protocols, which address a fundamental problem in peer-to-peer networks (how to efficiently locate a node that stores particular data items).
Since long before the patent applications were filed, graph theory has been actively applied in a variety of industries and fields, including integrated circuit design, operations research (scheduling), and computer networks.
A regular graph has all of its edges uniformly distributed; therefore, reducing the probability of the occurrence of bottlenecks.”) Also, long before July 2000, a POSITA would have known the generalized formulas for maintaining an m-regular non-complete topology when adding or subtracting a node.
Shoubridge also demonstrates familiarity with the use of flooding for broadcasting information to all (rather than just one) nodes in the network as evidenced by its citation to Ex. 1007 (John M. McQuillan, et al., “The New Routing Algorithm for the ARPANET,” IEEE Transactions Comms., Vol.
A POSITA would have been motivated to do so for any number of reasons that were also well known in the art, including, for example, ensuring the compatibility and usefulness of the disclosed communications network, given the popularity and mass reach of the Internet at the time.