Patent ID: 8509790

Claim:
A method comprising: providing a communications facility adapted to communicate with a destination mesh network node via a wireless mesh network that includes a plurality of nodes, the plurality of nodes further including a first plurality of single speed nodes and a second plurality of multi-speed nodes, each one of the first plurality of single speed nodes operating at a low data rate and each one of the second plurality of multi-speed nodes operating at the low data rate and a high data rate, each of multi-speed nodes further including multiple parallel receive demodulators to receive, without prior negotiation, a signal at either of the low data rate at a first frequency or the high data rate at a second frequency, wherein the communications facility is capable of transmitting data at a communication speed selected from a plurality of communication speeds that includes the low data rate and the high data rate, and wherein the plurality of communication speeds operate on the same communications channel and wherein at least one communications channel has multi-speed capabilities across a plurality of frequencies; in response to receiving data intended for the destination mesh network node, causing the communications facility to select a communication route to the destination mesh network node, wherein: (i) the destination mesh network node is linked to a device and has a preferred transmission speed corresponding to the low data rate, wherein the destination mesh network node includes a power-on-reset circuit which is active even in a sleep mode; (ii) an intermediate node in the communication route that communicates directly with the destination mesh network node and is a multi-speed node adapted to transmit at either the low data rate or the high data rate; and transmitting the data to the destination mesh network node through the communication route at the low data rate.