Patent ID: 8576870

Claim:
A method for supporting wireless networking between a first electronic device and a second electronic device, wherein the second electronic device sends a series of probe requests to the first device on a sequence of channels incremented in single-channel increments, each of the probe requests including an information element, the method comprising: with the first device, maintaining a first wireless local area network link with access point equipment using a given wireless local area network channel; with the first device, listening for probe requests from the second device on the given wireless local area network channel; with the first device, receiving a probe request from the second device; with the first device, extracting the information element from the probe request and comparing the extracted information element to a predetermined information element to determine whether the extracted information element matches the predetermined information element; and in response to determining that the extracted information element matches the predetermined information element, establishing a second wireless local area network link between the first device and the second device without the access point equipment.