Wireless Terminal AP Traffic Control via Filtering Rules
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Solution Overview
Problem
Wireless mobile terminals operating in IEEE 802.11 WLANs are vulnerable to unwanted data traffic, such as high data rate 'pings' and denial of service attacks, leading to battery drain and performance degradation, as they lack effective protection mechanisms.
Innovation Solution
A wireless mobile terminal identifies excessive processing requirements and sends a control message to the access point to prohibit data traffic from specific source addresses, including a time value indication to manage the prohibition period, thereby controlling unwanted data traffic.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the wireless mobile terminal receives all incoming data traffic in the WLAN, then the terminal can process legitimate data communications, but the terminal is exposed to excessive battery drain and performance degradation from unwanted data traffic
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an access point as an intermediary between the wireless mobile terminal and the data traffic. The access point filters and controls incoming data packets based on rules received from the terminal, preventing unwanted traffic from reaching the terminal in the first place. This resolves the contradiction by blocking harmful traffic at the intermediary level while allowing legitimate traffic through, thereby protecting the terminal without requiring it to process and then discard unwanted packets.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements preliminary action by having the wireless mobile terminal proactively send control messages to the access point containing filtering rules before unwanted traffic arrives. The terminal identifies patterns of unwanted traffic and pre-configures the access point with prohibition rules, source addresses, or destination addresses to block. This preliminary configuration prevents the battery drain issue by stopping unwanted traffic before it reaches the terminal, rather than reacting after receiving and processing harmful packets.
2Reliability
If the wireless mobile terminal processes all incoming data packets, then the terminal can identify legitimate communications, but the processing requirement exceeds the predetermined threshold causing performance degradation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the function of data traffic filtering from the wireless mobile terminal and relocates it to the access point. The terminal sends control messages with filtering criteria to the access point, which then handles the actual filtering of data packets. This extraction resolves the contradiction by removing the processing burden from the terminal, allowing it to maintain identification capability through control messaging while the access point handles the computationally intensive packet filtering, thus improving overall processing throughput.
Solution Approach 2:
The access point serves as an intermediary that performs the computationally intensive data packet filtering operation. Instead of the terminal processing all packets and then identifying legitimate ones, the access point intermediary filters packets based on terminal-provided rules, reducing the processing load on the terminal while maintaining reliable identification of legitimate communications through the control message mechanism.
3Productivity
If the access point transmits all data traffic to the wireless mobile terminal, then the network delivers all outgoing data, but RF bandwidth is wasted on unwanted data traffic
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by having the terminal send control messages to the access point with filtering rules before unwanted traffic is transmitted. The access point uses these pre-configured rules to prohibit transmission of specific data packets to the terminal. This prevents waste of RF bandwidth by blocking unwanted traffic at the source (access point) rather than transmitting it and then having the terminal discard it, thus maintaining complete delivery of legitimate data while conserving RF bandwidth.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent converts the potential harm of unrestricted data transmission into benefit by using the access point's data transmission capability selectively. Instead of transmitting all data (wasting bandwidth on unwanted traffic) or transmitting nothing (losing legitimate traffic), the system uses control messages to enable selective transmission. The access point leverages its transmission function to deliver only beneficial traffic, converting the broad transmission capability into a precision tool that benefits both bandwidth efficiency and data delivery completeness.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for use in controlling data traffic in a wireless local area network (WLAN) which includes at least one access point (AP) are described. In one illustrative example, the terminal is associated with the AP and receives data traffic from a source device via the AP. The terminal identifies whether a processing requirement of the terminal for processing data traffic exceeds a predetermined threshold. In response to such identifying, the terminal produces a control message which includes a source address corresponding to the source device and a destination address corresponding to the terminal, and sends the control message to the AP. The control message is defined to instruct the AP to prohibit transmission of the data traffic originating from the source address and destined to the destination address. In one scenario, the control message further includes a time value indication, for instructing the AP to prohibit transmission of the data traffic only for a time period indicated by the time value indication.