Patent ID: 8116233

Claim:
A method for configuring a local station to communicate with one or more peer stations via a wireless network, the method comprising: receiving a message from a peer station; parsing the received message to retrieve a peer station information element, the peer station information element including a peer station network address and a peer station bitmap that indicates at least one of allocated and unallocated network addresses within a set of network addresses; selecting a local station network address first portion of a local station network address for the local station based on the peer station network address; selecting a local station network address second portion of the local station network address for the local station corresponding to a network address indicated as unallocated in the peer station bitmap; transmitting another message containing a local station information element, the local station information element including the local station network address selected by the local station and a timestamp with information related to a time at which the local station network address second portion was allocated by the local station; generating a local station bitmap that indicates at least one of allocated and unallocated network addresses within the set of network addresses; including the generated local station bitmap in the local station information element; updating the local station bitmap to indicate that a network address is unallocated when there is at least one failure to receive a message from the peer station associated with the network address for a predetermined period of time; and receiving a network beacon message with a peer station bitmap that indicates that the network address is not allocated.