Patent ID: 8190150

Claim:
A method for synchronization of mobile device information in a wireless local area communication network, the method comprising: associating a mobile device to a first access point; transmitting a roam notification message from the first access point to all access points in the wireless local area communication network indicating that the mobile device has the potential to roam to any of the access points in the network, wherein the roam notification message to all the access points includes an identity of the first access point and the mobile device; associating the mobile device to a second access point; establishing that the first and second access points are roaming neighbors by the second access point communicating the mobile device identity to the first access point identified in the roam notification message to confirm that the first and second access points are roaming neighbors; building a roaming neighbor list in the associated first and second access points for the mobile device, wherein the list includes the mobile device identity and those neighboring access points where the mobile device has been associated; and preemptively pushing authentication information about the mobile device to those access points in the roaming neighbor list of the second access point to synchronize the authentication information about the mobile device before the mobile device actually roams; wherein the roaming neighbor list includes access points that are not physical neighbors and cannot communicate with each other using a direct radio frequency technique.