Patent ID: 7069483

Claim:
A method for identifying a plurality of nodes that are communicatively coupled to form a wireless mesh network, comprising: constructing a first data communication at a first node in a wireless mesh network, the first data communication comprising a plurality of fields including a type field configured to indicate that the first data communication is a single hop broadcast message; broadcasting the first data communication from the first node in the wireless mesh network, wherein the first data communication is received by one or more second nodes in the wireless mesh network; receiving an acknowledgement message at the first node from the one or more second nodes, wherein each acknowledgement message provides an indication of the quality of the wireless mesh network link between the first node and the particular second node that sent the respective acknowledgement message; constructing a second data communication at each of the one or more second nodes in response to the first data communication, the second data communication comprising a plurality of fields including a type field configured to indicate that the second data communication is a single hop broadcast message; broadcasting the second data communication from each of the one or more second nodes in the wireless mesh network, wherein the second data communication is received by the first node and one or more third nodes; disregarding each second data communication received by the first node; receiving an acknowledgement message at a particular second node from one or more third nodes, wherein each acknowledgement message provides an indication of the quality of the wireless mesh network link between the particular second node and the particular third node that sent the respective acknowledgement message; providing the first node wit information about each third node; and identifying the plurality of nodes tat are communicatively coupled to form the wireless mesh network.