Patent ID: 8670325

Claim:
A method comprising: identifying one of a plurality of beacon rate increase events during a first period of time; responsive to identifying at least one of the plurality of beacon rate increase events during the first period of time, changing from a first rate at which routing information is wirelessly provided from a device, the first rate being in effect at least before the first period of time, to a second rate, higher than the first rate, at which routing information is wirelessly provided by the device at least after the first period of time; and responsive to none of the plurality of beacon rate increase events being received during a second period of time, the second period of time following the first period of time, changing from the second rate at which routing information-is wirelessly provided by the device, to a third rate, lower than the second rate, at which routing information is wirelessly provided by the device, wherein the routing information provided by the device indicates a cost of routing a message through a network along a path from the device to the destination, wherein the routing information is provided by the device in one or more beacons, each of the one or more beacons including an identifier of the device, an identifier of the destination, and identifiers of at least a first node and a second node in a best path from the device to the destination, wherein the first node corresponds to a next-hop node that is farthest from the destination and nearest to the device; wherein the second node corresponds to a node that has built a message identifying the first node as the next-hop node; wherein the best path is a lowest cost path from the device to the destination, and wherein the cost is a function of a number of hops from the device to the destination and, for each hop, a corresponding number of retries required to traverse the hop.