System and method for determining weak membership in set of computer nodes

A system and method for solving the weak membership problem in a system of nodes that might include redundancies. Each node is given the same random seed. Each node uses a link state protocol to determine the current system topography, and then an optimization such as simulated annealing is run on the topography at each node, independently of the other nodes, to determine the optimum weak membership for use thereof in subsequent system operations. Since each node starts with the same random seed, the nodes all arrive at the same solution without having to communicate a common solution between nodes.