Patent ID: 7720037

Claim:
A method of communicating using a first wireless device, the method comprising: joining a wireless mesh network that includes at least one wireless device configured to operate a wireless routing protocol; discovering a group of other wireless devices configured to participate in the wireless mesh network; identifying a network topology that indicates a location of the first wireless device in the wireless mesh network and a location of the second wireless device relative to a location of wireless routers, wherein the first wireless device, the second wireless device and the wireless routers are structured and arranged to run a wireless routing protocol; accessing an interest metric for a second wireless device in the group of other wireless devices, wherein the interest metric is based in part on a network topology from the wireless mesh network; relating the interest metric to an interest threshold; determining whether relating the interest metric to the interest threshold supports enabling messaging communications between the first and second wireless devices; and if so, enabling messaging communications to be exchanged between the first and second wireless devices.