A method for detecting and correcting looping problems in a publish-subscribe messaging network is disclosed. The messaging network requires a token which uniquely identifies a node in this messaging network or universally unique in this messaging network. The messaging network maintains a list of Universally Unique Identifiers (UUID) as a metadata attached to each publish-subscribe message ("publication"). As a node forwards a publication to another node, it is required to append its own UUID to this list or discard the message if its UUID already is in the attached list. Several nodes could form a broker cooperative aggregate node and have a unique identifier for all the nodes in the cooperative if they have an internal mechanism for preventing publication looping.