Patent ID: 8817642

Claim:
A method for establishing communications between a user device and a peer device, the method comprising the user device: detecting a peer device that is wirelessly broadcasting a custom Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) that advertises the peer device as belonging to a family of peer devices; determining, using the custom UUID, whether a pairing has previously been made with the peer device or any other peer device in the family of peer devices, or whether the custom UUID indicates the peer device does not belong to the family of peer devices; if the pairing has previously been made, establishing a connection with the peer device using a previously stored link key; if the pairing has not previously been made, performing a pairing operation with the peer device to create a link key and generating a record associating the link key with the family of peer devices; and if the peer device does not belong to the family of peer devices, performing a first search of local data storage for indication of a previous paring with the peer device but not for other peer devices in the family of peer devices, performing a second search of the local data storage for indication of a previous paring with the family of peer devices but not for the peer device or performing both the first search and the second search in any order.