Patent ID: 7986642

Claim:
A wireless network system comprising an access point and a plurality of wireless devices, each of which plurality of wireless devices is configured to communicate wirelessly with the access point or directly with each other in an ad hoc mode without communication via the access point, the access point comprising a registrar setup portion configured to establish each of the plurality of wireless devices as a registrar which establishment permits wireless communication between each of the wireless devices and the access point, and each of the plurality of wireless devices comprising: a memory portion for storing a unique identifier for each of the plurality of wireless devices; a data-supply requesting portion configured to transmit at a predetermined time interval in the ad hoc mode to each of the other wireless devices a data-supply request packet requesting each of the other wireless devices to transmit the identifier of each of the other wireless devices stored in the memory portion of that other wireless device; a request replying portion configured to respond to the data-supply request packet received from each of the other wireless devices by transmitting to each of the other wireless devices a data-supply-request reply packet including the identifier of that other wireless device; a reply-data receiving portion configured to receive the data-supply-request reply packet transmitted from each of the other wireless devices; an identifier retrieving portion configured to retrieve the identifier of that other wireless device from the data-supply-request reply packet received by the reply-data receiving portion and to store the retrieved identifier in the memory portion; and a registrar registering portion configured to register each of the other wireless devices, the identifier of which is stored in the memory portion, as one of the plurality of wireless devices, which are permitted to effect wireless communication with the access point, after each of the plurality of wireless devices is established as the registrar by the registrar setup portion of the access point.