Patent ID: 7680089

Claim:
A device that is capable of functioning as a wireless node in a wireless ad hoc network, the device comprising: a traffic measurement and information exchange module to collect network information and to retain network information received via beacon broadcasts from one or more other wireless nodes, the network information including node identifications (IDs), wherein to retain network information comprises associating respective node IDs with respective channels in a data structure in accordance with the collected network information and channels on which the beacon broadcasts were received; a channel assignment module to create a virtual wireless network by separating a subset of wireless nodes from the wireless ad hoc network by switching from a current channel to another channel, wherein the channel assignment module retrieves the another channel from the data structure; and a connectivity maintenance module to merge the virtual wireless network into the wireless ad hoc network using the network information when a communication is for a destination wireless node that is not among the subset of wireless nodes in the virtual wireless network.