Method and device for creating at least one expansion of an association message for wireless mesh networks

A method to operate a mesh network according to IEEE Standard 802.11s, comprising:

• exchanging data packets between at least one first station and at least one second station disjunctive to the mesh network,
• wherein the mesh network comprises a plurality of network nodes comprising external edge nodes and internal network nodes, and
• wherein at least one first edge node serves as a connection point for said at least one first station disjunctive to the mesh network, and wherein at least one second edge node serves as a connection point for said at least one second station that is disjunctive to the mesh network, wherein the first and second stations are external stations in relation to the mesh network;
• switching a disjunctive station from one edge node to another edge node;
• updating association information of a network node via an association message with an insertion of a validity period for the association information of respective disjunctive stations connected at the edge nodes;
• determining the validity period for associations of any edge nodes contained in the association message by separate values, wherein a number of associations is indicated by value M;
• determining the validity period for all N associations contained in the association message for an edge node and for all M associations contained in the association message for any other edge nodes by separate values that are individual bits that indicate if an area with N associations for the first edge node and an area of M associations for the other edge nodes in the association message respectively exist, a first validity period for the area with N associations and a second validity period for the area with M associations having separate additional flags fields in their respective areas;
• and
• providing an additional flags field in the association message that determines if the association message contains an additional flags field for the area with N associations and the area with M associations.

A mesh network comprising:

• a first edge node;
• a second edge node communicatively connected to the first edge node;
• wherein the first edge node of the network nodes serves as a connection point for a first station disjunctive to the mesh network, and wherein the second edge node serves as a connection point for said second station that is disjunctive to the mesh network, wherein the first and second stations are external stations in relation to the mesh network;
• in response to switching the first disjunctive station from the first edge node to the second edge node, association information of the first edge node being updated via an association message sent by the second edge node and received by the first edge node, the association message identifying association information of the disjunctive stations that are external to the mesh network that are connected to at least one of a third edge node of the mesh network and the second edge node,
• wherein the association message has a structure having a plurality of fields, the fields comprising an element identification field, a length field, a flags field, a sequence number field, and at least one validity period field and at least one information field, the at least one validity period field having a value therein to indicate a validity period for at least a portion of the association information of the association message, and
• each of the at least one information field comprising at least one of:
• a first area identifying the second edge node once and identifying a plurality of disjunctive stations to which the second edge node is connected to identify the disjunctive stations connected to the second edge node, and
• a second area identifying complete associations, each of the complete associations identified in the second area identifying the third edge node and a respective one of the disjunctive stations to which that third edge node is connected;
• wherein the at least one information field comprises a first information field that only has the first area, the first area comprising a plurality of fields, the fields of the first area identifying an address of the second edge node and an address for each of the disjunctive stations to which the second edge node is connected to identify associations the second edge node has with the disjunctive stations to which the second edge node is connected identified in the first information field;
• wherein the at least one information field comprises a second information field that only has the second area, the second area comprising a plurality of fields that each identify an address of the third edge node and an address for a respective one of the disjunctive stations to which that third edge node is connected to identify an association of the third edge node to that respective one of the disjunctive stations;
• and
• wherein the first area of the first information field has a flags field that has information identifying whether a validity period of one of the at least one validity period field applies to all associations of the first information field and the second information field has a flags field that has information therein to identify that a validity period of another one of the at least one validity period field applies to one of the associations identified in the second information field.