1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless communication apparatus, a wireless communication method, and a computer-readable storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there is known a technique of automatically reconnecting a wireless network when connection of the wireless network is broken. For example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2012-065208 discloses an apparatus that reconnects a wireless network when its connection is broken.
However, in a wireless communication apparatus disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2012-065208, after disconnection of wireless communication performed between the wireless communication apparatus and an access point (first communication), if address information such as an IP address, a subnet mask address, or a default gateway address of the wireless communication apparatus provided by the access point is changed, communication between the wireless communication apparatus and another communication apparatus via a network (second communication) becomes unable to resume. To explain this more specifically, the access point continues to transmit a wireless signal referred to as “beacon” with a constant interval so as to inform the presence of the access point itself to the wireless communication apparatus. The beacon includes a 32-byte SSID (Service Set Identifier) for indentifying a wireless network. Conventionally, connection is made with an SSID and an identification/encryption method which are the same as those before the disconnection. Although no problem occurs as far as the address information provided by the access point is not changed, for example, when the access point changes the IP address allocated to the wireless communication apparatus, the second communication cannot be performed unless the IP address of the wireless communication apparatus to be reconnected is also changed.
As for the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) reference model, although reconnection is established on the layer 2 level, which is from a physical layer to a data link layer, reconnection is not established on the layer 3 level or higher, which is a network layer or higher. Therefore, a process during communication cannot be performed. To avoid this problem, a user needs to change and initialize the setting of the wireless communication apparatus and to change and initialize the setting of layers at the layer 3 level or higher; however, this processing is difficult for users who do not have any expertise in this technique.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a wireless communication apparatus, a wireless communication method, and a program in which, even if connection information of a network layer is changed after reconnection of communication between an access point to the wireless communication apparatus via wireless communication, the connection information of the network layer is automatically acquired, and thus communication to a communication counterpart can be made.