Patent ID: 8451807

Claim:
A method of routing a packet in an ad-hoc network comprising: providing a packet at a first node, the first node being one of a plurality of nodes; determining a destination node for the packet, the destination node being one of the plurality of nodes; providing configuration information representing the relative location of each of the plurality of nodes to the first node, wherein the relative location of each node is provided to the first node during a set-up of the first node on the network; using a first routing protocol to discover a first route between the first node and the destination node; when at least one route discovered by the first routing protocol is valid between the first node and the destination node, routing the packet through the at least one route discovered by the first routing protocol, wherein a route is valid when it has no breakages; and when no routes discovered by the first routing protocol are valid between the first node and the destination node, routing the packet from the first node using a configuration aware routing protocol using the configuration information stored at the first node by: selecting at least one forward node based on the configuration information, wherein the forward node is in a direction towards the destination node; and sending the packet to the at least one forward node.