Routing protocols for Mesh-Networks have been intensively researched in the past years. Protocols such as the AODV, OLSR, Robin-Mesh, BATMAN Adv and Netsukuku are examples from the conducted research. But one common aspect among these mesh routing protocols is the inability to identify and select a specific network path to route packets.

The application of autonomic self-* properties has always been a challenge, mainly because of the existing limitations with the communication capabilities. Being able to select a specific path to route packets in a mesh network is a capability which an autonomic agent can use to ensure communication quality and self-healing.

This paper proposes a computationally distributed technique to uniquely identify specific network paths with global identifiers, generated by using hash functions.
Path identifiers (Path IDs) can be used by the Autonomic Agents (Peers) in a communications network to implement redundancy or traffic engineering, without resorting to centralized management, full network consensus or full topological knowledge