Patent ID: 8464336

Claim:
A cellular mobile device comprising: a transmitter and receiver to send and receive cellular communications in the form of radio frequency signals; a microprocessor; a virtual private network (VPN) network client executing on the microprocessor to establish a secure VPN connection with a remote VPN security device, wherein the VPN network client processes network packets for securely tunneling the network packets between the cellular mobile device and the remote VPN security device, wherein the VPN network client establishes a secure control channel with the remote VPN security device for the secure VPN connection and, upon a successful authentication, receives a session cookie with a unique identifier, wherein, in the event communication with the remote VPN security device is temporarily lost, the VPN network client performs a fast reconnect without requiring re-authentication of the cellular mobile device by communicating the session cookie to the remote VPN security device, and wherein, prior to performing the fast reconnect, the VPN network client identifies a set of transport mechanisms currently available to the cellular mobile device and, when only a cellular network is available and not a wireless packet-based connection, the VPN network client defers the fast reconnect to the cellular network until application-layer data is received from a user application and is ready to be sent to the remote VPN security device via the VPN connection.