Patent ID: 8036185

Claim:
A consolidated Radio Frequency (RF) network system comprising: at least one enterprise application coupled to a network; a plurality of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) readers coupled to the network and having one or more associated RFID antennae, the RFID readers configured to process tag information from RFID tags within range of the RFID antennae; a plurality of wireless access ports communicatively coupled to the network and having one or more associated access port antennae, the wireless access ports configured to process data packets received from a plurality of mobile units and data packets from active RFID tags within range of the access port antennae; and an RF switch communicatively coupled to the network and configured to receive the data packets from the access ports including the tag information from the RFID readers, wherein the RFID switch is configured to provide a discovery procedure to become communicatively coupled to network via a Radio Network Controller (RNC), wherein the procedure includes first using an Internet Protocol subnet broadcast, and if no response is received referring to a list of statically configured RNCs, and if no response is received consulting a list of previously discovered RNCs, and if no response is received using a list of RNCs received in a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) offer, the RF switch configured to act as an RFID reader to provide tag information from data packets from active RFID tags, and to transmit the data packets from the mobile units and the tag information from the RFID readers and access ports to the at least one enterprise application, wherein the RF switch aggregates and filters the tag information based on zone information of the RFID readers and access ports, the zone information based on multiple read points logically combined.