Patent ID: 7580364
Filing Date: 2009-08-25
Classification: H04W

Abstract:
1. An apparatus, comprising: a transceiver configured to communicate with at least one access point (AP) in a mesh network and adapted to recover from disjoint clusters in said mesh network by detecting disjoint clusters by performing fast channel scans and adding an Extended Service Set (ESS) number information element (IE) in Beacon and/or Probe Response frames such that all APs in an ESS mesh network operate on the same channel and broadcast a same ESSID as well as a same ESS number in their Beacons; wherein during said scan, each AP creates a table of network transmission channels and ESS numbers for said same ESSID networks and when an AP detects that different clusters exist with said same ESSID, it first looks at an ESS Number of different clusters; and wherein a cluster with a smallest ESS Number is selected as a parent cluster and if a node detects that it is not said parent cluster, then it initiates a channel change process which sends out a self-configuration change channel request with a channel of said parent cluster and corresponding ESS Number.