Communication channels are partitioned among active nodes in an unbounded computing space. A node may register with a discovery system to obtain an address window (that may correspond to a range of IP addresses). The node communicates only with nodes in accordance with the address window. Even though a partition corresponds to a subset of the nodes in the unbounded computing space, the partition overlaps with partitions of other nodes so that all nodes may interact with each other, either directly or indirectly. Because a node may be cognizant of a small subset of active nodes in the unbounded computing space, both security and scalability are supported.