Patent ID: 7881695

Claim:
A method of communication from a first power line communication (PLC) device to a second PLC device over a PLC network, comprising: at the first PLC device, in response to detection of a user instruction to start streaming content to the second PLC device, determining if a communication synchronization beacon signal has been received from a PLC master device within a first established period of time, where the first PLC device and the PLC master device comprise at least one of an audio streaming device and a video streaming device associated with the PLC network; if not, the first PLC device determining that a communication session being carried out over the PLC network has ended; broadcasting, in response to determining that the communication session being carried out over the PLC network has ended, a master search message that requests services of the PLC master device, where the master search message is formatted in a same manner as the communication synchronization beacon signal; and if an acknowledgement is received from the PLC master device within a second established period of time, obtaining communication parameters from the PLC master device to permit a streaming PLC network communication over the PLC network, and streaming the content from the first PLC device to the second PLC device using the obtained communication parameters.