Patent ID: 8102863

Claim:
A gateway interconnecting a Wide Area Network (WAN) to a lower speed Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) comprising: an adaptable cross-layer offload engine; a data cache associated with the offload engine; a network interface communicatively coupling the offload engine to the WAN and providing a first data rate; and a wireless interface associated with the offload engine and adapted to communicate with a plurality of user devices within the WLAN, the wireless interface providing a second data rate that is less than the first data rate of the network interface; wherein the offload engine is adapted to: receive incoming data from the WAN via the network interface at the first data rate; store the incoming data in the data cache; and transmit the incoming data from the data cache to a corresponding one of the plurality of user devices in the WLAN via the wireless interface at the second data rate; further wherein the gateway further comprises: a rule check engine adapted to inspect the incoming data from the WAN based upon at least one rule prior to transmitting the incoming data to the corresponding one of the plurality of user devices in the WLAN, the at least one rule comprises at least one Digital Rights Management (DRM) rule and the rule check engine operates to identify data to be processed by a DRM function and initiate the DRM function for the identified data; and the DRM function initiated by the rule check engine based on the at least one DRM rule, the DRM function being adapted to encode the identified data such that encoded data is transmitted to the corresponding one of the plurality of user devices within the WLAN, and provide license keys for decoding the encoded data to desired ones of the plurality of user devices having permission to consume the encoded data.