Can I change the group owner in a persistent group

Question

When creating a group via Wi-Fi Direct, I know that I can make a persistent group.

My question is: can I create a persistent group, but each time change the group owner (i.e; each turn the group owner will be one of the devices in the group).

Also, when creating a persistent group, it is required to accept the connection only the first time, right?

Answer 1

The answer for your first question is NO. "The P2P Group Owner of a Persistent P2P Group is determined when the P2P Group is formed and is the same P2P Device in subsequent P2P Group sessions." This line from the p2p specification says that you cant' change the group owner.

Yes, it is required to accept the connect just in the first time.A persistent group allows reconnection without user intervention.

Answer 2

The persistence behaviour is not supported yet in android wifi direct framework.

Answer 3

You can now create a new persistent group via WifiP2pManager.createGroup(..). It will create a new group and make the calling device (A) group owner and can do what you described. The only problem is once you create a group and connect to another device, that other device (B) will remember that specific group. If you try to create a new group in A (say, opening the app a second time) and try to connect from B, it will automatically join the old group and not appear as if it is connected in the new group in A.

EDIT: There is a way to wipe out all persistent groups. It is a hidden function called deletePersistentGroups. This will wipe out every single one though, but it seems to be the only reliable way to solve your problem. Call this after you call WifiP2pManager.initialize(..), so you can use the channel.

private void deletePersistentGroups(){
    try {
        Method[] methods = WifiP2pManager.class.getMethods();
        for (int i = 0; i < methods.length; i++) {
            if (methods[i].getName().equals("deletePersistentGroup")) {
                // Delete any persistent group
                for (int netid = 0; netid < 32; netid++) {
                    methods[i].invoke(wifiP2pManager, mChannel, netid, null);
                }
            }
        }
    } catch(Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

I'm not quite sure why the netid goes up to 31, I would assume that that is the maximum number of allowed remembered connections. Code taken from here.