Patent ID: 8638797

Claim:
A method for communication in a wireless mesh network, comprising: forming a media access control (MAC) frame for the wireless mesh network with multiple mesh points (MPs) having multiple corresponding addresses, the MAC frame comprising a frame control field, a source address, a destination address, a duration field, a sequence control field, and a sequence number field to suppress a duplicate MAC frame received at a destination station identified by the destination address from a source station identified by the source address, wherein the sequence number field is separate from the sequence control field in the MAC frame; generating a sequence number for the sequence number field using a single counter, wherein the sequence number is a sequentially assigned number; receiving the MAC frame at an intermediate MP; comparing a last-received sequence number for the source address against the sequence number from the sequence number field and comparing the destination address to an address corresponding to the intermediate MP; and maintaining the sequence number unmodified in the sequence number field at the intermediate MP, when the addresses corresponding to the intermediate MP is not equal to the destination address of the MAC frame.