Patent ID: 8755364

Claim:
Method for managing mobility of a mobile device within a network, comprising: at a Local Mobility Anchor (LMA) of an internet protocol (IP) network, initializing and maintaining an LMA-time within the LMA; performing a relative time synchronization procedure between the LMA and a plurality of Media Access Gateways (MAGs) connected to the LMA using MIPv6 signaling, said relative time synchronization procedure comprising: receiving a first Proxy Binding Update (PBU) request with specific semantics from each MAG in conjunction with the corresponding MAG connecting to the LMA, each first PBU request requesting the LMA-time, wherein the specific semantics correspond to predefined values for a Care-Of Address (CoA) and a Home-Of Address (HoA), the predefined values being either null or another value that does not conflict in domain space; and providing a first PBU acknowledgement with the LMA-time to MAGs from which first PBU requests were received, wherein MAGs receiving the first PBU acknowledgement maintain the LMA-time; and performing a binding procedure to bind the mobile device to the LMA using MIPv6 signaling, the binding procedure comprising: receiving a second PBU request from one or more MAG connected to the LMA in conjunction with the mobile device performing entry to an access network associated with the corresponding MAG, each second PBU request including a timestamp based on the LMA-time maintained by the corresponding MAG; and sending a second PBU acknowledgement to the corresponding MAG in response to each second PBU request received, wherein the second PBU acknowledgement includes a successful acknowledgement if no other MAG currently binds the mobile device with the LMA or if the timestamp in the corresponding second PBU request is newer than timestamps received in prior second PBU requests for binding the mobile device, wherein the second PBU acknowledgement includes an out of date acknowledgement if the timestamp in the corresponding second PBU request is not newer than timestamps received in prior second PBU requests for binding the mobile device.