Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for locating mobile objects in a distributed network having a large number of nodes connected by a communication network, each object supported by a stable storage server. The system uses either a two level or three level method to provide reliable and economical location of objects. The levels are increasingly expensive, but increasingly reliable. In the first level, address descriptors or forwarding addresses are used to retrace the mobile object's movements from node to node, each node ideally having an address descriptor indicating the location of the next node to which the object moved. If this strategy fails, the second level (which is more expensive and more reliable than the first) is used and includes accessing stable storage to find a current address descriptor for the object. If the object still cannot be located, the most expensive and most reliable level is used, i.e., a universal name service.