Patent ID: 11962685
Assignee: RAYTHEON COMPANY
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 9:
10. A method of exchanging data in a large-scale Ethernet mesh network, the method comprising:
establishing signal communication between a plurality of dual-mode peer devices, each of the dual-mode peer devices implementing an authenticator port access state machine (PACP SM) and a supplicant PACP SM each operating in accordance with a modified Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.1X standard for port-based network access control;
mutually authenticating a plurality of dual-mode peer devices to form a group connectivity association (CA);
simultaneously operating the authenticator PACP SM an authenticator mode and the supplicant PACP SM in a supplicant mode to ensure continued presence of at least one of the dual-mode peer devices operating as an authenticator in the group CA;
exchanging encrypted data between sending dual-mode peer devices and receiving dual-mode peer devices in the group CA, using a shared group encryption key (SAK),
wherein the plurality of dual-mode peer devices are configured to continue operation of the group CA in response to one or more of the dual-mode peer devices leave the group CA, and
wherein the continued operation includes:
selecting at least one of the dual-mode peer devices participating in the group CA as a newly elected dual-mode peer device in response to a key server change event, wherein the remaining dual-mode peer devices continue simultaneously operating in the supplicant mode and the authenticator mode after the one or more of the dual-mode peer devices leave the group CA; and
delivering a new group of Connectivity Association Keys (CAKs) by the newly elected key server to ensure the integrity of the group CAKs lifetime.