Patent ID: 8588156

Claim:
A method comprising: determining, at a first wireless network device of a wireless communication network operating in an infrastructure mode, that a data frame is scheduled to be transmitted from the first wireless network device to a second wireless network device of the wireless communication network; determining whether the data frame can be directly transmitted to the second wireless network device based, at least in part, on connection information received in a beacon frame from an access point of the wireless communication network, the connection information comprising a device identifier associated with the second wireless network device and an indication of whether data frames can be directly transmitted to the second wireless network device; in response to determining that the data frame can be directly transmitted from the first wireless network device to the second wireless network device, directly transmitting the data frame to the second wireless network device, determining that an acknowledgement frame for the data frame was not received from the second wireless network device, and updating a direct connect flag associated with the second wireless network device to indicate that the data frame cannot be directly transmitted to the second wireless network device based, at least in part, on said determining that the acknowledgement frame for the data frame was not received from the second wireless network device; and transmitting the data frame to the access point for transmission to the second wireless network device via the access point, in response to determining that the data frame cannot be directly transmitted from the first wireless network device to the second wireless network device.