Patent ID: 8130656

Claim:
A method for routing to a non-mesh network a first data flow received at a first mesh gateway via a wireless link, the method comprising: determining that an available bandwidth of a backhaul link to the non-mesh network through the first mesh gateway is below a threshold value; determining that the first data flow from a wireless node has a higher priority than a second data flow from the wireless node currently routed through the first mesh gateway to the non-mesh network; forwarding the second data flow to a second mesh gateway in response to determining that the available bandwidth of the backhaul link is below the threshold value and determining that the first data flow has a higher priority than the second data flow, wherein the second mesh gateway is selected from a plurality of mesh gateways based on preference information of mesh gateways in the plurality of mesh gateways, wherein the preference information comprises one or more of a latency factor weight value, a reliability factor weight value, and a bandwidth factor weight value of a flow type, whereby the second mesh gateway routes the second data flow to the non-mesh network; and routing the first data flow to the non-mesh network through the first mesh gateway after forwarding the second data flow to the second mesh gateway.