Band steering for multi-band wireless clients

Abstract

Band steering for multi-band wireless clients. In a wireless digital network having at least one central controller and a plurality of access nodes connected to the central controller, and wherein some of the access nodes support a preferred wireless band and at least one non-preferred wireless band, the central controller identifies wireless client devices capable of multi-band operation, and encourages them to connect to the preferred wireless band. Client devices may be identified as multi-band capable by tracking probe requests. The central controller keeps a list of multi-band capable clients, for example in a database. This information is provided to other central controllers, and to access nodes attached to the central controller. Multi-band capable clients are encouraged to connect on the preferred wireless band for example by having the access nodes not respond to probe requests on the non-preferred wireless bands. Connections made on the non-preferred wireless bands may be moved to the preferred wireless band.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.