Patent ID: 8537829

Claim:
A serving gateway comprising: an interface for communicating with a user equipment, wherein a serving gateway receives packets from and transmits packets to the user equipment with the interface; a computer readable medium that is configured to buffer at least one data packet; and a processing unit configured to: determine whether a previously established bearer connection is being re-established with the user equipment prior to receiving a notification at the serving gateway that the user equipment is capable of receiving a downlink packet; upon making a determination that the bearer connection is being re-established, initiate sending a downlink packet destined for the user equipment to the computer readable medium until a bearer connection is re-established with the user equipment; check whether the downlink packet is received in response to an uplink data packet sent by the user equipment before the bearer connection is re-established; and check, based on whether the uplink packet was received at the serving gateway, a configurable amount of time before the downlink packet was received at the serving gateway, wherein the configurable amount of time is based on an amount of time to re-establish a bearer connection with the user equipment.