Patent ID: 7797531

Claim:
A wireless ad-hoc communication system, comprising: a first terminal that transmits a signal to a broadcast address which does not specify a particular terminal, said signal including beacon information indicating whether or not the first terminal has a terminal-authorization-certificate for a network that is accessed by a plurality of terminals and the terminal-authorization-certificate is used by each of the plurality of terminals to determine access rights to the network; and a second terminal from the plurality of terminals that is configured to receive the signal and detect whether or not the terminal-authorization-certificate is present at the first terminal based on the beacon information, and to transmit, when the second terminal determines that the terminal-authorization-certificate is not present, a suggestion message prompting the first terminal to request the terminal-authorization-certificate, wherein one of the plurality of terminals is an issuing terminal which initially provides the terminal-authorization-certificate to at least another of the plurality of terminals when setting up the network, and also provides a public key certificate for verifying ownership of the terminal-authorization-certificate, said terminal-authorization-certificate and public key certificate identifying the issuing terminal and being stored on each of the plurality of terminals in the network such that each of the plurality of terminals is configured to provide the terminal-authorization-certificate to a new terminal seeking to access the network.