Patent ID: 8165102

Claim:
A network-enabled hub, usable for facilitating data communications between two or more wireless devices that are configured to communicate indirectly with each other via the network-enabled hub, comprising: an interface to a wireless radio circuit that can send and receive data wirelessly, providing the hub with bi-directional wireless data communication capability; logic for processing data received via the wireless radio circuit; logic for generating data to be transmitted by the wireless radio circuit; logic for initiating and maintaining network connections with nodes of a wireless network external to the network-enabled hub, maintaining at least a first network connection using a first network protocol and a second network connection using a second network protocol, that can be maintained, at times, simultaneously with each other, wherein the second network protocol is an overlay protocol with respect to the first network protocol in that communications using the second network protocol are partially consistent, but not entirely consistent, with the first network protocol; and data forwarding logic, implemented in the network-enabled hub using hardware and/or software, that forwards data between an originating node and a destination node, wherein the originating node is a node in of one of the first and second networks and the destination node is a node in the other of the first and second networks, the data forwarding logic also capable of identifying an address of the destination node in the data packet in order to use that address to transmit data into the second network.