Patent ID: 11950128
Assignee: CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC.
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 14:
15. A network node comprising a control plane (CP) function for session management of a mobile network, the mobile network having an Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and Fifth Generation (5G) converged core configured to support communications of a user equipment (UE) via a first Long-Term Evolution (LTE) radio access network (RAN) and a 5G RAN, the network node comprising:
one or more processors;
one or more interfaces to connect in the mobile network; and
one or more memory elements for storing instructions executable on the one or more processors for operation as the CP function for session management for:
managing a connection for the UE operating via the LTE RAN, the connection including a first bearer between the LTE RAN and a central serving gateway-user plane (SGW-U) at a central location, and a second bearer between the central SGW-U at the central location and a central user plane function (UPF) and packet gateway-user plane (PGW-U) (UPF+PGW-U) at the central location;
performing a procedure for establishing local traffic offloading for the UE;
wherein performing the procedure for establishing the local traffic offloading for the UE includes communicating one or more first messages for inserting a local SGW-U at an edge location, to update the first bearer to be between the LTE RAN and the local SGW-U at the edge location, and the second bearer to be between the local SGW-U at the edge location and the central UPF+PGW-U at the central location; and
wherein performing the procedure for establishing the local traffic offloading for the UE further includes communicating one or more second messages for inserting a local intermediate user plane function (I-UPF) and PGW-U (I-UPF+PGW-U) with an uplink classifier (UL-CL) at the edge location, to update the second bearer to be between the local SGW-U and the local I-UPF+PGW-U with the UL-CL at the edge location, and to establish a third bearer of the connection to be between the local I-UPF+PGW-U at the edge location and a central anchor UPF (A-UPF) at the central location.