Patent ID: 8331335

Claim:
A method, comprising: determining, with a communication device, respective distances between the communication device and a plurality of wireless local area network (WLAN) access points, wherein determining the respective distances is based on position information corresponding to the plurality of WLAN access points and position information corresponding to the communication device; determining, with the communication device, whether a distance between (i) the communication device and (ii) a current WLAN access point with which the communication device is currently associated is greater than a threshold; when it is determined that the distance between (i) the communication device and (ii) the current WLAN access point is greater than the threshold, initiating, with the communication device, a background scanning process that includes: selecting, with the communication device, one of the plurality of WLAN access points with which the communication device is to associate based on the determined distances, including: evaluating the plurality of WLAN access points in an order, wherein the order is based on the determined distances, wherein evaluating each WLAN access point includes determining if the WLAN access point is acceptable, and stopping evaluating the plurality of WLAN access points before all of the plurality of WLAN access points have been evaluated if an acceptable WLAN access point is determined.