Patent ID: 7676676

Claim:
A method for mutual authentication of a first and a second node in a peer-to-peer network, the method comprising the steps of: sending a first authentication message to the second node, the first authentication message comprising information needed for the second node to authenticate the first node and information needed by the second node for the second node to be authenticated by the first node, the first authentication message comprising a first pairwise master key identifier (PMKID) list; receiving a second authentication message from the second node, the second authentication message comprising information needed by the first node for the first node to be authenticated by the second node and information needed for the first node to authenticate the second node, the second authentication message potentially comprising a selected PMKID from the first PMKID list, and wherein the second authentication exchange message contains a second PMKID list differing from the first PMKID list; and performing an authentication exchange after receiving the second message only if no selected PMKID is identified in the second authentication message.