Patent ID: 7729326

Claim:
A communication system comprising: a wireless switch; a plurality of wired access ports coupled to the wireless switch via a wired connection and configured to receive data over the wired connection and over a first wireless connection; and a plurality of wireless access ports each configured to receive data over a second wireless connection from a mobile user and to send data over the first wireless connection to the one of the plurality of wired access ports, the wireless access port further configured to receive and to encapsulate first wireless data packets received from the mobile user into first wired data packets based on a wired transmission protocol including adding a header into the first wired data packets with a destination address field indicating an address of the wireless switch and then to further encapsulate the first wired data packets into second wireless data packets based on a wireless transmission protocol including adding a header into the second wireless data packets with a destination address field indicating an address of the wired access port; and wherein the wired access ports are each configured to receive the second wireless data packets from one of the plurality of wireless access ports and to extract the first wired data packets from the second wireless data packets received for subsequent transmission over the wired connection to the wireless switch.