Techniques are presented herein to distribute the processing of communication to network-connected devices to routing nodes, as opposed to centralizing those operations in one device as in the traditional/classical system. Using a bitmapped Type field, advertisements and queries can be categorized. Also, by using a Subgroup field, the scope of advertisements and queries can be dynamically limited. These techniques reduce the number of matches and make the matches more relevant to the user who sent the query. Routing nodes can be any network element that routes traffic, physical or virtual (cloud-based router or switch). The intelligence to perform these techniques can be embodied as an overlay on top of a physical network.