Patent ID: 7031278

Claim:
A method for carrying out soft handoff of a mobile station from a first base station to a second base station both served by a wireline subnet having a link layer different than the link layer of the wireless network serving the mobile station, each of said base stations having a wireline link layer address and said mobile station having a wireless MAC address, the method comprising the steps of; storing a shadow address in the first base station and the second base station, the shadow address corresponding to the mobile station, having a format compatible with the link layer of the wireline subnet, and being distinct from said base station link layer addresses and said mobile station wireless MAC address, said step of storing includes assuming the shadow address by said first base station, transmitting a frame containing a packet from a sending device over the wireline subnet using the shadow address as the link layer destination address of the packet; and concurrently processing the frame in the mobile station as received from the first base station and the second base station.