System and method for common attributes in HESSID and the associated queries

Mobile stations can query independent basic service set (BSS) parameters of a group of Access Points (APs) by setting a Pre-Association Message Exchange BSSID Independent (PAME-BI) bit during Wi-Fi discovery. The PAME-BI bit may be included in a Generic Advertisement Service (GAS) request to indicate that an Access Network Query Protocol (ANQP) request carried by the GAS request is querying both independent and dependent BSS parameters. In some embodiments, the PAME-BI bit is included as a field in the ANQP query, rather than the GAS request message.