Patent ID: 9549368
Date: 2017-01-17
CPC Classifications: H04L,H04W

Claim:
1. A method of managing a data connection between a user device and a plurality of content caches in a cellular network formed of a plurality of base stations, a plurality of gateway servers and said plurality of content caches, each content cache being associated with one of the gateway servers, the user device and content caches being connected to the cellular network via a first base station and a first gateway server initially allocated to said first base station, the method being carried out by a gateway reselection apparatus within the cellular network and comprising: receiving a request for content data from the user device via the first base station and first gateway server, accessing data identifying a set of said plurality of content caches containing said requested content data; selecting one content cache from the set of content caches to serve the requested content data to the user device, said selection based on the proximity of the content cache to the geographic location of the user device; identifying a second gateway server associated with the selected content cache which is different from the first gateway server, and causing the data connection between the user device and the first gateway server to be transferred to the second gateway server associated with the selected content cache via the first base station, before the requested content data is transferred to the user device from the selected content cache via the second gateway server and first base station.