Patent ID: 8150955

Claim:
A first access point for a wireless LAN communication network, wherein the first access point is adapted to: (a) send probe requests and probe responses to other access points, (b) receive probe requests and probe responses from other access points, (c) calculate an interference parameter for each of a plurality of its possible channels, (d) calculate a channel sharing parameter for each of the plurality of channels, (e) calculate a regular channel quality parameter (regCSIQ) for each of the plurality of channels, indicative of the amount of interference and channel sharing on each of the plurality of channels, using the interference and channel sharing parameters, and (f) dynamically select a new channel from the plurality of possible channels using the regular channel quality parameters (regCSIQ), wherein: the first access point is arranged to select the new channel by mutually swapping channels with a second access point using a swapping mechanism in which: the new channel for the first access point is the previous channel for the second access point; and the new channel for the second access point is the previous channel for the first access point; and the first access point is further adapted to monitor traffic load, wherein the probe responses include traffic load information (i) carried in the probe responses and (ii) corresponding to the traffic load at the access points that send the probe responses.