Patent ID: 8885495

Claim:
A method in a communication device, the method comprising: determining, in the communication device, a minimum modulation and coding scheme (MCS) based on a maximum data unit size, wherein the maximum data unit size is a physical layer (PHY) data unit size or a media access control layer (MAC) data unit size, and wherein the minimum MCS is an MCS below which a data unit exceeds the maximum data unit size; determining, in the communication device, whether a communication channel supports at least the minimum MCS; causing, in the communication device, data units to be transmitted according to an MCS, wherein causing data units to be transmitted according to the MCS includes causing data units to be transmitted according to an MCS that is equal to or exceeds the minimum MCS when it is determined that the communication channel supports at least the minimum MCS, and when it is determined that the communication channel does not support at least the minimum MCS, performing an act selected from a group consisting of (i) partitioning a MAC data unit into MAC data unit fragments so that the MAC data unit fragments are transmitted at an MCS supported by the communication channel, and (ii) reducing a network maximum transmission unit (MTU) size so that one or more resulting MAC data units are transmitted at the MCS supported by the communication channel.