Patent ID: 7768959

Claim:
A wireless network device for communicating with a network, the wireless network device comprising: a memory to store an image, the image comprising a plurality of virtual machines and only one multi-tasking operating system, wherein each of the plurality of virtual machines comprises one of a plurality of wireless network applications to execute on the multi-tasking operating system; a processor to execute the plurality of virtual machines; and a port comprising a physical-layer device to communicate with the network, and a media access controller to communicate with the physical-layer device and the processor, wherein the memory comprises one of a plurality of virtual machine queues for each of the plurality of virtual machines and a processor queue for the processor that is separate from the plurality of virtual machine queues, wherein the processor stores data to be processed in the processor queue for members of the plurality of virtual machines being executed by the processor, wherein each respective one of the plurality of virtual machines creates a copy in a respective one of the plurality of virtual machine queues of the data in the processor queue when the processor is executing the respective one of the plurality of virtual machines, and wherein when the processor resumes executing a first of the plurality of virtual machines after executing a second of the plurality of virtual machines, the first of the plurality of virtual machines copies the data from the respective one of the plurality of virtual machine queues for the first of the plurality of virtual machines to the processor queue.