Wireless LAN device and communication mode switching method

A communication mode switching method for a wireless LAN device which is adapted to control access points, comprising:

• receiving, via any of the access points, a packet transmitted from any of terminals in infrastructure mode;
• looking up stored terminal information about the terminals associated with the individual access points, based on terminal information about an originating terminal and a destination terminal contained in the packet, to identify an access point with which the originating terminal is associated and a different access point with which the destination terminal is associated;
• looking up stored radio wave coverage information on whether the access points are within each other's coverage of radio waves, to determine whether the different access points with which the originating terminal and the destination terminal are respectively associated are within each other's coverage of radio waves;
• and
• switching mode of communication between the originating terminal and the destination terminal to ad-hoc mode in accordance with a result of the determination.

A method for controlling a plurality of access points for communication, comprising:

• storing radio wave coverage information about coverage of radio waves amongst the access points;
• storing terminal information about communication terminals associated with the individual access points;
• receiving, via any of the access points, a packet transmitted from any of the communication terminals in infrastructure mode;
• looking up the stored terminal information, based on terminal information about an originating communication terminal and a destination communication terminal contained in the packet, to identify an access point with which the originating communication terminal is associated and an access point with which the destination communication terminal is associated;
• looking up the stored radio wave coverage information, to first determine whether the access points with which the originating communication terminal and the destination communication terminal are respectively associated are within each other's coverage of radio waves;
• switching mode of communication between the originating communication terminal and the destination communication terminal to ad-hoc mode in accordance with a result of the first determination;
• storing the packet transmitted in the infrastructure mode;
• receiving, from the communication terminals, radio wave non-coverage information which is indicative of non-coverage of radio waves between the terminals and which is generated based on RTS/CTS frames exchanged between the terminals and the access points;
• and
• storing the radio wave non-coverage information,
• wherein the storing the packet transmitted in the infrastructure mode does not store the packet transmitted between the originating and destination communication terminals, whose packet is in the received radio wave non-coverage information.