Method and apparatus to provide a routing protocol for wireless devices

• US 7,689,224 B2
• Filed: 01/09/2004
• Issued: 03/30/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/29/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi Energy Limited
• Original Assignee: Tropos Networks Incorporated (ABB Limited)
• Inventors: Srikrishna, Devabhaktuni, Chari, Amalavoyal Narasimha
• Primary Examiner(s): Ramakrishnaiah; Melur
• Application Number:
  US10/754,978
• Publication Number:
  US 20040143678A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,272 Days
• Field of Search: 455/445, 455/463, 455/454, 455/452, 455/453, 370/351, 370/254, 370/255, 370/238, 370/400, 370/338, 370/331, 709/227
• US Class Current: 455/445
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/20 Hop count for routing purposes, e.g. TTL
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/02 Communication route or path selection, e.g. power-based or shortest path routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/10 based on available power or energy
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/12 based on transmission quality or channel quality
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/246 Connectivity information discovery
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/26 for hybrid routing by combining proactive and reactive routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/32 for defining a routing cluster membership
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/04 adapted for relaying to or from another terminal or user

Abstract

A method and apparatus for generating connectivity is described. The method includes a server broadcasting a beacon including the server'"'"'s address. The method further includes each client that receives the beacon rebroadcasting the beacon. The result is that each client receiving the beacon knows a way to reach the server.

Claims

1. A routed wireless network comprising:

a plurality of wired access points;

a plurality of clients, each client belonging to a cluster of clients administered by a single server and such that membership in a cluster is elected by the client through a selection of a beacon to rebroadcast; and

one path identified by the beacon designated as the optimal path, setting a default gateway as identified in the optimal path, and rebroadcasting only the beacon representing the optimal path by a client selecting the beacon, wherein the optimal path provides a complete path to the single server, and the beacon includes addresses of all clients included within the complete path to the single server.

2. The network of claim 1, wherein the membership in the cluster may change as a result of a client roaming from one region to another within the network.

3. The network of claim 1, wherein the membership in the cluster may change as a result of the addition of a new server to the network.

4. The network of claim 3, wherein the new server may be a client that is converted into a server by adding a wired connection.

5. The network of claim 1, wherein the membership in the cluster may change as a result of the server selected by the client failing to provide adequate service.

6. The network of claim 1, wherein server capacity is optimized among the clusters.

7. The network of claim 1, wherein response delay experienced by the clients is minimized.

8. The network of claim 1, wherein cluster membership is elected to lead to more efficient utilization of network capacity.

9. The network of claim 1, wherein each server of a cluster is limited to a number of clients.

10. The network of claim 1, wherein each server can perform at least one of client authentication, billing, network monitoring, bandwidth provisioning and quality of service guarantee.

11. The network of claim 1, wherein cluster size of a server is determined by a capacity of the server.

12. The network of claim 1, wherein mobile clients can move from one cluster to another cluster.

13. The network of claim 1, wherein a new routing table is generated when a client changes cluster membership.

14. The network of claim 1, wherein new clusters may be created to enable the network to adjust to available backhaul.

15. The network of claim 1, further comprising:

determining if there is a previous default gateway identified; and

deleting the previous default gateway from memory.

16. A routed wireless network comprising:

a plurality of wired access points;

a plurality of clients, each client belonging to a cluster of clients administered by a single server and such that membership in a cluster is elected by the client through a selection of a beacon to rebroadcast;

wherein the beacon broadcast by the server includes a hop-count set to zero;

each client that receives the beacon rebroadcasting the beacon with the hop-count incremented by one;

each client that receives the beacon rebroadcasting the beacon with an address of the client; and

such that each client receiving the beacon knows a complete path to reach the server and the number of hops in the complete path to the server, and the beacon includes addresses of all of the clients included within the complete path to the server.

17. A routed network comprising:

a plurality of wired access points;

a plurality of clients, each client belonging to a cluster of clients administered by a single server and such that membership in a cluster is elected by the client through a selection of a beacon to rebroadcast;

wherein each client that receives the beacon rebroadcasting the beacon with an address of the client added to the beacon;

such that each client receiving the beacon has a complete path to the server, and the beacon includes addresses of all of the clients included within the complete path to the server.