Patent Document ID: 8165143
Application ID: 12724635
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. An apparatus, comprising: a reception module in an intermediate node to receive, from a source node, a route request message associated with a destination node; and a processing module in the intermediate node to determine that when the intermediate node has a route to the destination node in its route cache and energy associated with the intermediate node is above a threshold, a counter associated with the intermediate node is to be adjusted and a message is to be sent to additional nodes along the route to cache the route, to adjust corresponding node counters, and to ignore later route requests; and to determine that when the intermediate node does not have the route in the route cache and the energy associated with the intermediate node is above the threshold, the counter associated with the intermediate node is to be adjusted, a counter check message is to be broadcast to neighboring nodes, and entries in route caches associated with the neighboring nodes that reveal themselves to be selfish nodes in response to the counter check message are to be invalidated; and to determine that when none of the neighboring nodes reveal themselves to be selfish nodes in response to the counter check message, the route request message comprising indications of values of the counter and the energy associated with the intermediate node is to be broadcast, and the later route requests are to be ignored.