Patent ID: 7069015

Claim:
A home agent for use in a wireless communication system supporting mobile Internet Protocol (IP), the home agent comprising: a plurality of mobility bindings, wherein each mobility binding comprises: a home address provided by the home agent for use by a corresponding mobile node; a care-of address received from the corresponding mobile node when the corresponding node sends a registration request message; a lifetime value defining a term of validity for the home address; and an inactivity timer to monitor an activity status of the corresponding mobile node, wherein the home agent is configured to create the inactivity timer for the corresponding mobile node when the mobility binding is created for the corresponding mobile node; and a resource condition that represents a current capacity of a home agent resource, wherein the home agent is configured to enter a resource reclaiming process when the resource condition satisfies an overload condition, wherein the resource reclaiming process searches each mobility binding of the plurality of mobility bindings for expired inactivity timers, and for each mobility binding with an expired inactivity timer the home agent implements a method comprising sending a series of echo request messages to the mobile node from the mobility binding with the expired inactivity timer.