Patent ID: 8130733

Claim:
A method of providing interoperability among a plurality of nodes in a communications network, the method comprising: defining a plurality of different types of interoperability which includes a basic type of interoperability; for each defined interoperability type, defining a support capability applied to each said node of said plurality of nodes to support the type of interoperability of each said node, the support capability being implemented on a first node to provide, at node architectural layers of the first node below an application layer of the first node, compatibility between the first node and a second node, where the second node has the same type of interoperability as the first node; on each of the nodes, providing one or more of the support capabilities, including at least the support capability for the basic type of interoperability; and configuring each said node to: have interoperability with other ones of said nodes using the basic type of interoperability; have a download capability to download a support capability available from any other one of the nodes; operate such that only when the first node establishes communication with the second node does the first node determine whether the second node uses another of the interoperability types in addition to the basic type of interoperability, and obtain, as necessary and on an ad-hoc basis, and use the download capabilities of each of the first and second nodes and availability information from the second node to initiate a download to the first node of a support capability available from the second node that provides the support capability for the other of the interoperability types for activation on the first node.