A system of controllers act as nodes on a network. One controller is identified as a supervisory node and the remaining controllers are identified as client nodes with the supervisory node and each client node broadcasting a default identifier, created at the time of manufacture, in a default domain. The default identifiers from the client nodes are received and ranked at the supervisory node according to a characteristic in the identifier. A network address is created at the supervisory node for each client node and broadcast in the default domain to all client nodes. The client nodes receive all network addresses but only recognize and internalize the network address corresponding to a specific client node. Control information is then communicated between nodes utilizing subnet and node addressing.