Patent ID: 9491196
Filing Date: 2016-11-08
CPC Classification: H04L,H04W

Claim Text:
1. A method of operating a router node of a wireless network, wherein said method is performed in said router node, said router node having a plurality of neighbor nodes in said wireless network, said method comprising: maintaining a single counter to represent a number of data packets transmitted thus far by said router node to said plurality of neighbor nodes, wherein said single counter is incremented upon transmission of a corresponding data packet to any of said plurality of neighbor nodes; receiving a group key from a parent node of said router node, wherein said parent node is comprised in said wireless network; forwarding said group key to a child node of said router node, wherein said child node is comprised in said wireless network; receiving a sequence of data packets for forwarding to respective destination nodes; and forwarding each data packet to at least one of said plurality of neighbor nodes, wherein each forwarded data packet contains a count value in a layer-2 header, wherein said count value represents the value in said single counter, wherein the count value in each of said sequence of data packets is a unique value representing the number of data packets transmitted thus far by said router node, wherein said sequence of data packets contain a set of multicast data packets and a set of unicast data packets, wherein said single counter is incremented upon transmission of each of said sequence of data packets, including said set of multicast packets and said set of unicast data packets, wherein said group key is used to encrypt the payload portion of the corresponding multicast data packet, wherein each forwarded multicast data packet contains an encrypted payload portion, and said count value in said layer-2 header of the multicast data packet.