Patent ID: 8634346

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving an initial attachment at a gateway including an identifier of a radio attachment point; obtaining a name for the radio attachment point based on the identifier; accessing a list of names of packet data network gateways (PGWs) that can serve the initial attachment to provide a network connection; comparing the name for the radio attachment point with the list of names of the PGWs to determine at least one PGW having a selected PGW name with labels reflecting topological location of the at least one PGW, that provides a desirable match to the name for the radio attachment point, wherein the name for the radio attachment point has labels reflecting topological location of the radio attachment point and the selected PGW name that provides the desirable match has the greatest number of matching labels with the name for the radio attachment point; and selecting at least one PGW that provides the desirable match to establish the network connection.