Patent ID: 8520615

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, with a breakout gateway device positioned within a mobile service provider network, a service request issued by a mobile device served by a radio access network, wherein the service request specifies a requested service supported by a packet data network (PDN); forwarding the service request from the breakout gateway device to a serving node of a mobile core network of the mobile service provider network, wherein the serving node couples the mobile core network to the radio access network to provide a first data path between the radio access network and the PDN; receiving, with the breakout gateway device and from the radio access network, a downstream tunnel identifier that identifies a bearer between the breakout gateway device and the mobile device; assigning, with the breakout gateway device, a network address to the mobile device for a data session associated with the service request; receiving, with the breakout gateway device, a packet for the data session from the PDN, wherein the packet is destined for the network address; and forwarding the packet from the breakout gateway device to the bearer to bypass the serving node on a second data path between the radio access network and the PDN, wherein forwarding the packet comprises encapsulating the packet in a tunneling protocol header that specifies the downstream tunnel identifier that identifies the bearer.