Patent ID: 7200130

Claim:
A method of configuring a short range RF network, the network comprising at least one host node and at least two wireless transceiver nodes, each transceiver node having a controller, a data store, and at least one transceiver for communicating wirelessly with other host and transceiver nodes, each transceiver having a unique identifier, the method comprising the steps of: (a) assigning a predetermined value to a variable n and associating the at least one host with a value of n; (b) paging all other nodes from the node associated with the value of n; (c) noting nodes which reply to paging and associating them with a value of (n+1); (d) making all nodes associated with the value of n or with lower values unresponsive to paging; (e) incrementing the value of n; and (f) repeating steps (b) through (e) until no nodes reply to paging; whereby the network is configured such that transceiver nodes beyond a transmission range of the at least one host node but within transmission range of one or more intermediate transceiver nodes accessible to said at least one host node and in wireless communication with said at least one host node become identified and accessible to said at least one host node by relaying through said intermediate transceiver nodes; wherein: control logic of each node computes an indication of current load carried by the node; each node dynamically transmits its load indication at least to nodes within its transmission range; and each node dynamically receives and stores load indications received from other nodes.