METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR VALIDATING AND DISTRIBUTING NETWORK PRESENCE INFORMATION FOR PEERS OF INTEREST

A method for distributing and maintaining network presence information is presented. According to an embodiment of the present invention, a user logs onto the Internet and transmits to an Internet Presence Information Server (IPIS) his/her presence information, a list of peers (individual network users) whose network presence are of interest to the user, and a request for a list of peers interested in the user's network presence. The IPIS then responds to the user with both a list including the last known Internet Protocol (IP) address for each peer the user is interested in and a list of peers interested in the user's Internet presence. No further communication between the user and IPIS is required after the IPIS responds to the user with these two lists. The user then attempts to directly contact the peers on the first list received from the IPIS by confirming and authenticating the received IP addresses. According to policy, the user directly contacts the peers on the second list received from the IPIS to inform those peers the user is currently signed on-line. Finally, the user periodically “pings” (directly contacts) the confirmed and authenticated IP addresses from the first list received from the IPIS to determine when those peers sign off-line.