Wireless burstable communications repeater

A wireless high speed data communication repeater comprising:

• at least one radio/data link element having an antenna coupled thereto being adapted for receiving and transmitting data packets in full duplex from at least one of a host computer and another wireless high speed data communication repeater, the at least one radio/data link element including a radio frequency transmitter and a radio frequency receiver;
• a medium access control circuit coupled to the at least one radio/data link element, the medium access control circuit manipulating data packets for transmission and reception, the medium access control circuit providing at least one of access to multiple radio/data link elements, channel allocation, protocol data unit (PDU) addressing, frame formatting, error checking, fragmentation, and reassembly of packets within the wireless high speed data communication repeater;
• a packet exchange bus within the wireless high speed data communication repeater through which substantially all data traffic passes through, the packet exchange bus being operatively coupled to the medium access control circuit;
• and
• a network control module which provides data management functions for multi-directional communication of data to and from the wireless high speed data communication repeater, the wireless high speed data communication repeater being adapted for transmitting at least a first control data packet as a source node and receiving at least a second control data packet as the source node, the repeater being adapted for receiving the first control data packet as a destination node and transmitting the second control data packet as the destination node in response to receiving the first control data packet, the first control data packet including a first sequence number associated therewith, the second control data packet including a second sequence number associated therewith, the first and second sequence numbers distinguishing the first control data packet from the second control data packet, thereby enabling at least one of the source node and the destination node to identify an inoperable portion of a wireless link from the wireless high speed data communication repeater.

A method of routing data in packets, the method including the steps of:

• receiving data packet by a radio/data link element of at least one of a plurality of wireless communication repeaters, the at least one of a plurality of wireless communication repeaters being a portion of a system including a host radio station electrically coupled to a source data, the at least one of a plurality of wireless communication repeaters being within a line-of-sight of said host radio station and adapted for two-way wireless full-duplex communication with the host radio station, the at least one of the plurality of wireless communication repeaters including at least one radio/data link element, a packet exchange bus in communication with the at least one radio/data link element, and a forwarding engine TCP/IP stack in communication with the packet exchange bus, the forwarding engine TCP/IP stack including therein a routing table, the packet exchange bus and the forwarding engine TCP/IP enabling the system to interface with the Internet;
• providing the received data packets through the packet exchange bus within the at least one of the plurality of wireless communication repeaters to the forwarding engine TCP/IP stack;
• routing the received data packets addressed to the at least one of the plurality of repeaters through the forwarding engine TCP/IP stack including passing the data packets through the routing table to determine whether the received data packets should be sent back to the packet exchange bus for delivery to another repeater or to deliver the packets to an Ethernet local to the at least one of the plurality of wireless communication repeaters;
• and
• testing a wireless link between at least two of the host radio station and the plurality of wireless repeaters by transmitting at least a first control data packet from a source node to a destination node and transmitting a second control data packet from the destination node to the source node, the source node and the destination node including at least one of the host radio station and the plurality of wireless communication repeaters, the first control data packet including a first sequence number associated therewith, the second control data packet including a second sequence number associated therewith, the first and second sequence numbers distinguishing the first control data packet from the second control data packet, thereby enabling at least one of the source node and the destination node to identify an inoperable portion of the wireless link between the source node and the destination node.