A method for creating a communication network from devices of an automation system, wherein the automation system is developed based on logical addresses of the devices and the devices are assigned physical addresses by which the devices are accessed to exchange data over the communication network when operating the automation system. An overlay network comprising a decentralized network is constructed with the devices as network nodes, wherein conventional mechanisms for decentralized networks for publication of resources and subscription to resources are used to map logical addresses used during development of the automation system to the physical addresses used when operating the automation system. Mapping is achieved by a resource or a subscription to a resource being suitably published during initialization of a respective device, wherein the resources are stored based on keys in the decentralized network which corresponds to a logical addresses, and the resource contents represent physical addresses.