ADVERTISEMENT OF MULTIPLE SECURITY PROFILES IN WIRELESS LOCAL AREA NETWORKS
First Claim
1. A method of advertising security profiles in a wireless local area network (WLAN), said method comprising the steps of:
- generating one or more unsolicited broadcast probe response frames, each unsolicited broadcast probe response frame incorporating security profile information corresponding to a security profile to be advertised; and
broadcasting said one or more unsolicited broadcast probe response frames to stations in said WLAN.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A novel and useful apparatus for and method of advertising multiple security profiles in wireless local area networks (WLANs). The security profile advertisement mechanism of the present invention advertises all configured security profiles by sending unsolicited 802.11 management probe response frames to the broadcast MAC address for available security profile. The access points sends these unsolicited probe response frames periodically, such as with the Beacon period. The conventional management application in the stations receives unsolicited advertisements of multiple SSIDs and perform a passive scanning process to obtain a list of BSSs available on the radio channel. The station can then display a list of all detected SSID advertisements to the user. The user of the station thus obtains information on all security profiles available on the access point without requiring any prior knowledge of specific SSIDs.
111 Citations
28 Claims
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1. A method of advertising security profiles in a wireless local area network (WLAN), said method comprising the steps of:
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generating one or more unsolicited broadcast probe response frames, each unsolicited broadcast probe response frame incorporating security profile information corresponding to a security profile to be advertised; and broadcasting said one or more unsolicited broadcast probe response frames to stations in said WLAN. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A method of advertising security profiles in a wireless local area network (WLAN) for use in an access point, said method comprising the step of:
periodically broadcasting a burst of unsolicited broadcast probe response frames wherein each frame in said burst comprises information corresponding to a security profile configuration in said access point. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15)
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16. A method of advertising security profiles in a wireless local area network (WLAN) for use in an access point, said method comprising the step of:
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periodically broadcasting a burst of unsolicited broadcast probe response frames wherein each frame in said burst comprises information corresponding to a security profile configuration in said access point; and broadcasting each frame burst at multiple transmission rates. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18)
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19. A single chip wireless local area network (WLAN) device, comprising:
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a PHY circuit operative to receive an IEEE 802.11 WLAN signal; a baseband processor/medium access control (MAC) coupled to said PHY circuit; a security profile advertisement module operative to periodically broadcast a burst of unsolicited broadcast probe response frames wherein each frame in said burst comprises information corresponding to a security profile configuration to be advertised; and a host interface operative to interface said device to an external host. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23)
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24. A wireless local area network (WLAN) access point, comprising:
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a radio frequency (RF) front end module (FEM) compatible with IEEE 802.11 WLAN coupled to an antenna; a PHY circuit coupled to said RF FEM; a baseband processor/medium access control (MAC) coupled to said PHY circuit; a host coupled to said baseband processor/MAC; and a security profile advertisement module operative to periodically broadcast a burst of unsolicited broadcast probe response frames wherein each frame in said burst comprises information corresponding to a security profile configuration to be advertised. - View Dependent Claims (25, 26, 27, 28)
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Specification