A system and method includes timing parameters within a node-verification protocol, such as OCPS, to facilitate a determination of the proximity of a target node to a source node. The node-verification protocol includes a query-response sequence, between the source node and the target node. The source node establishes a lower bound on the distance between the source node and the target node based on a measure of the time required to effect this query-response sequence including the time required to communicate the query and response, as well as the time required to process the query and generate the response. The target node includes a measure of the time required to process the query and generate the response to the source node. The source node subtracts this time from the total query-response time to determine the time consumed for the communication.