After the joining node receives an IP address of a node already in the CAN, it can attempt to identify a zone for itself. The joining node randomly picks a point in the coordinate space and sends a join request, directed to the random point, to one of the received IP addresses. The nodes already in the overlay network route the join request to the correct device via their zone-to-IP routing tables. Once the node managing the destination point's zone receives the join request, it may honor the join request by splitting its zone in half, allocating itself the first half, and allocating the joining node the second half. If it does not honor the join request, the joining node keeps picking random points in the coordinate space and sending join requests directed to these random points until it successfully joins the network.