Patent ID: 7801100

Claim:
A method of operating an ad-hoc Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), the method comprising: maintaining a network identifier within a WLAN controller of a first wireless communication terminal; maintaining a plurality of application keys within a memory of the first wireless communication terminal, wherein each of the application keys is defined for a different one of a plurality of application programs hosted on the first wireless communication terminal, and the memory is separate from the WLAN controller; and establishing an ad-hoc WLAN between the first wireless communication terminal and a second wireless communication terminal using the network identifier and a first application key, wherein the first application key is one of the plurality of application keys, defined for a selected one of the application programs, wherein establishing the ad-hoc WLAN further comprises: appending the first application key to the network identifier to form a combined network identifier; and in response to executing the selected application program, broadcasting the combined network identifier as a WLAN request from the first wireless communication terminal in an attempt to establish the ad-hoc WLAN and initiate communication between the selected application program and an application program on the second wireless communication terminal having a second application key that corresponds to the first application key.