1. A method of forming a wireless data communication network amongst a plurality of transceivers for tracking articles associated with the transceivers, comprising: assigning a class designation to a population of transceivers based on a common characteristic or behavior of the articles associated with the transceivers; selecting a primary transceiver from among the population of transceivers, the remainder of the population of transceivers being secondary transceivers; and forming a class-based hierarchical network amongst the population of transceivers, including: (a) broadcasting from the primary transceiver a primary availability signal including a primary class identifier representative of the class designation assigned to both the primary transceiver and the secondary transceivers, (b) in response to the primary availability signal, transmitting from a responding one of the secondary transceivers a registration signal including a secondary transceiver identifier, (c) storing at the primary transceiver the secondary transceiver identifier of the responding secondary transceiver, and (d) repeating steps (b) and (c) for each of the secondary transceivers; to thereby facilitate class-based communication with the population of transceivers.