Patent ID: 8559330

Claim:
A method of operating a wireless cellular access point in electrical communication with a cellular network configured to allow access from at least one user device, the method comprising: (a) determining a set of acceptable cellular base stations by establishing a connection with at least one cellular base station among a plurality of cellular base stations, for a first protocol of operation; (b) for each cellular base station where a connection is established, determining the available data rate for the connection in a first protocol of operation; (c) repeating steps described in (a) and (b) for another protocol of operation in response to the cellular network and the cellular access point jointly supporting more than one protocol of operation; (d) selecting the cellular base station based on a metric that takes into account data rates available over the wireless links corresponding to the plurality of cellular base stations; (e) periodically repeating steps (a)-(d) during operation; (f)communicating over a wireless link with a cellular base station selected from a plurality of available cellular base stations by a cellular access point; and (g) operating the cellular access point such that an antenna adjusted in a preferred direction that is selected based on a data rate that is then available over the wireless link with a selected cellular base station.