In another optional manner, the association acknowledgement information further includes a statistical identifier, and the statistical identifier indicates a quantity of second STAs to which the AP sends acknowledgement requests by using a same piece of association acknowledgement information. The statistical identifier is located after per traffic identifier information in the association acknowledgement information. Alternatively, the statistical identifier occupies a bit reserved in block acknowledgement starting sequence control in the association acknowledgement information.
a generation module 1801, configured to generate a token identifier, where the token identifier is used to uniquely identify the first STA;
a sending module 1802, configured to send an association request message to an access point AP, where the association request message includes the token identifier generated by the generation module 1801;
a receiving module 1803, configured to receive a multi-block acknowledgement M-BA frame broadcast by the AP, where the M-BA frame includes one or more piece of association acknowledgement information, the association acknowledgement information is acknowledgement information of the association request message, the association acknowledgement information includes a token identifier of one or more second STA and a first association identifier AID that is allocated by the AP to the second STA, and the second STA is a STA corresponding to the association request message successfully received by the AP; and