Patent ID: 7508803

Claim:
A method of communication between a transmitter node and a receiver node in a multi-hop communication network, comprising: formatting information into a data structure to generate a mesh action frame, wherein the mesh action frame comprises: a header comprising a source address (SA) that identifies a source node, a destination address (DA) that identifies a recipient node, a transmitter address (TA) that identifies a sender node, and a receiver address (RA) that identifies a receiver node; and a body field comprising a mesh action data unit, wherein the mesh action data unit comprises: a category field configured to specify at least one of a plurality of category values, wherein each category value corresponds to a particular management category; an action field configured to specify at least one of a plurality of management action values for each category field; and a contents field comprising information corresponding to the action value specified in the action field, wherein the category value and the action value uniquely identify the contents field; and sending the mesh action frame from the transmitter node.