Patent ID: 9667485
Date: 2017-05-30
CPC Classifications: H04L,H04W

Claim:
1. An apparatus, comprising; a processor of an access point configured to be operatively within a network including a plurality of network nodes and a core network node, and a transceiver of the access point configured to send a first discovery message, the transceiver configured to receive a second discovery message based on the first discovery message, the processor configured to identify an address of the access point and an address of the core network node based on the second discovery message, the processor configured to set up a control-plane tunnel to the core network node based on the address of the access point and the address for the core network node and to receive control information from the core network node through the control-plane tunnel, the transceiver configured to be operatively coupled to an access network node from the plurality of network nodes, the transceiver being configured to forward wireless traffic through intervening wired network nodes from the plurality of network nodes to a controller, the transceiver configured to receive incomplete network topology information from a plurality of incomplete network topology information from each network device from a subset of the plurality of network devices that is directly coupled to the access point, the incomplete network topology information including a list of network devices directly coupled to that network device, the transceiver configured to send the incomplete network topology information including a list of network devices that is directly coupled to the access point to a second network device from the subset of the plurality of network devices and receive updated network topology information from the second network device, the updated network topology information being defined by the second network device based on (1) the incomplete network topology information received from the access point and (2) a network topology that was discovered by the second network device before the incomplete network topology information was received from the access point.