Patent ID: 8850204

Claim:
A method to establish a multi-link security association between two wireless computing devices comprising: selecting from one band of multiple bands to perform multi-link ciphering based on a cipher suite particular to the selected band; performing a 4-way handshake protocol exchange between the two devices, wherein the 4-way handshake protocol is performed using one or messages, wherein a first message of the one or more messages, includes an inserted Multi-Link Key Data Encryption (KDE) into a key data field of the first message by an authenticator device of the two devices, wherein the Multi-Link KDE is defined by flags, a first MAC address and a second MAC address, wherein the flags indicate the link of each MAC address, wherein the first MAC address for 2.4/5 GHz link when the first bit of the flags is 1, and the second MAC address for 60 GHz link when the second bit of the flags is 1; negotiating multi-link ciphering capability that includes multiple links, during the 4-way handshake protocol exchange; generating unique keys for each of the links as a result of the 4-way handshake protocol exchange and the first message of during the 4-way handshake protocol that includes the first and second MAC addresses on each of link of a multi-link security association in the first message, wherein the generating unique keys is based on the Multi-Link KDE.