Protocol for communication between access ports and wireless switches

摘要

A wireless local area network includes access ports which communicate over a wired network with wireless switches which control the access ports and bridge data between portals in the access ports and another network. Code for operating the access ports and for configuring the portals is separately downloaded from the wireless switch. Where an access port includes more than one portal, separate ethernet addresses are assigned to the processor of the access port and to the portals for communications with the wireless switch. The protocol may provide separate sequence numbers for the communications and include a command field.