Patent ID: 8045555
Filing Date: 2011-10-25
Classification: H04L,H04W

Abstract:
1. A method for a communications node operation within a network, wherein the communications node is at a beginning of a tunnel, the method comprising: receiving a message from a communications device at an end of the tunnel, the message comprising a flow label related to a first source address and a first destination address; processing a packet either injected to the network by the communications node or received from another node in the network, the packet having the first source address and the first destination address; encapsulating the packet with an outer header, thereby producing a tunnel packet, the outer header having a second source address and a second destination address; compacting the tunnel packet based on a tunnel optimization (TO) state if the communications node has created and stored a TO state when previously processing another packet with a same source and destination addresses as the first source address and the first destination address and the TO state has not been removed; and transmitting the tunnel packet towards the second destination address, wherein the second destination address comprises an address of the communications device at the end of the tunnel; wherein the communications node supports an Internet Protocol version 6 protocol.