Patent ID: 8861367

Claim:
A method of supporting peer-to-peer communication of a wireless mesh network, comprising: a node within the wireless mesh network maintaining a routing table that indicates a first route to a client device; the node receiving a different route to the client device; the node determining whether the different route is better or worse than the first route based on a client device age, a device age and an age at next hop, wherein the client device age indicates how long the client device has been associated with at least one access node of the wireless mesh network, the device age indicates when a downstream access node selected a route to the node, and the age at next hop indicates a time since a next wireless hop downstream device updated its routing table; the node deleting the first route to the client device after the node determines the different route is better than the first route; the node sending a route delete to the next wireless hop downstream device of the first route of the client device after the node determines the different route is better than the first route; determining whether the node is a gateway of the wireless mesh network and wherein when the node is determined to be a gateway of the wireless mesh network and determines the different route is better than the first route, the node broadcasting existence of a different route to other gateways of the wireless mesh network, the node sending a Gratuitous Address Resolution Protocol (GARP) to an upstream router that routes to the client device, and the node uni-casting a route delete to the other gateways.