1. In a namespace federation infrastructure, a method for routing a: namespace lookup request, the method comprising: an act of receiving a namespace lookup request that includes a namespace identifier identifying a namespace branch; an act of generating an at least one-way equivalent numeric identification value based on the namespace identifier; and an act of sending the namespace lookup request to a destination namespace manager, the destination namespace manager being included in a neighborhood of namespace managers that are within a predefined range of a namespace manager having a unique identifier numerically closest to the at least one-way equivalent numeric identification value.