Patent ID: 8140709

Claim:
A system for providing header compression in a communications network, the system comprising: a first stage device that performs the following steps: receiving a packet having an uncompressed header that belongs to a flow, identifying a context identifier (CID) associated with the flow, morphing the uncompressed header into a pseudo-compressed header, transmitting the received packet with the pseudo-compressed header, and determining that a context for the flow has changed by comparing the uncompressed header to a stored context for the flow, wherein the pseudo-compressed header comprises the CID associated with the flow, an indication that the header is pseudo-compressed, and an indication whether the context for the flow has changed; and a second stage device that performs the following steps: receiving the packet having the pseudo-compressed header, determining that the received packet has the pseudo-compressed header by reading the indication that the header is pseudo-compressed, determining whether the received packet should be transmitted over the communications network with a compressed header, a full header, or an uncompressed header, morphing the pseudo-compressed header into the compressed header when the received packet should be transmitted with the compressed header, morphing the pseudo-compressed header into the full header when the received packet should be transmitted with the full header, morphing the pseudo-compressed header into the uncompressed header when the received packet should be transmitted with the uncompressed header, determining that the context for the flow has changed by reading the indication, incrementing a generation number for the flow, and transmitting the received packet over the communications network after morphing the pseudo-compressed header.