A system maintains a dormant state in the host, in which no beacons (or “bubbles”) are transmitted from the host when no application or service (collectively, “processes”) of the host is accepting unsolicited traffic via the edge traversal service. When at least one application or service begins to accept unsolicited traffic via the edge traversal service, the host enters a qualified state and begins transmitting the beacons. As each additional application or service begins to accept such traffic, the number of accepting applications and services is maintained. As applications and services terminate acceptance of such traffic, the number of accepting applications and services is decremented. When the last application or service terminates acceptance of unsolicited traffic via the edge traversal service, the host re-enters the dormant state and ceases transmission of its beacons.