Patent ID: 7352772

Claim:
Apparatus comprising: a wireless network interface which supports a plurality of wireless protocols including a physical carrier-sense protocol and a virtual carrier-sense protocol, wherein the virtual carrier-sense protocol is utilized by provided clients which are unable to detect the physical carrier-sense protocol; and a flow controller which is coupled to said wireless network interface and which maintains a physical timer corresponding to traffic conforming to physical carrier-sense protocol, wherein the flow controller isolates traffic over said wireless network interface based on protocol by delaying virtual-carrier-sense-protocol traffic until after the physical timer elapses; wherein the physical timer commences in response to a first instance of physical-carrier-sense-protocol traffic following a first wireless network event and is set to elapse after a first predetermined amount of time, wherein the first wireless network event is selected from the group consisting of an idle network event and a virtual-carrier-sense-protocol traffic event.