Patent ID: 6907022

Claim:
A method in a portable subscriber unit for minimizing a connection setup time in a communication network comprising a wide area network, the method comprising the steps of: maintaining in a memory of the portable subscriber unit a list identifying a plurality of devices which are to be connected quickly through the communication network; establishing a new connection with the communication network; and performing, in response to establishing said new connection, when necessary for pre-programming the communication network to minimize the connection setup time for subsequent connections with said plurality of devices, at least one of the steps of: sending names of the plurality of devices to a domain name server (DNS) of the communication network to obtain Internet Protocol (IP) addresses corresponding to the names, thereby causing the DNS to cache the IP addresses of the plurality of devices for faster servicing of subsequent connections; and transmitting a dummy IP packet to said plurality of devices, wherein the step of establishing the new connection comprises the steps of: establishing the new connection via a new local area network (LAN); and comparing an identifier of the new LAN with a previously stored identifier of a most recently connected old LAN, and wherein the method further comprises, prior to the performing step, the step of determining that the sending and transmitting steps are not necessary when the identifier of the new LAN is equal to the previously stored identifier of a most recently connected old LAN.