 In this scenario, searches might automatically age out of the network after, say, 10 seconds.By then, the initiator knows the answer and there is no point in further gossip about that search.Gossip protocols have also been used for achieving and maintaining distributed database consistency or with other types of data in consistent states, counting the number of nodes in a network of unknown size, spreading news robustly, organizing nodes according to some structuring policy, building so-called overlay networks, computing aggregates, sorting the nodes in a network, electing leaders, etc.