Patent ID: 8134969

Claim:
A method for fast roaming of a mobile access point, comprising in the mobile access point: storing internet protocol (IP) addressing information associated with a first subnet in a cache; receiving a beacon transmitted from the first subnet when the mobile access point roams back to the first subnet from a second subnet, wherein the beacon comprises a subnet identifier associated with the first subnet and provides L2 WLAN information; using the subnet identifier to determine whether the cache includes an entry for the first subnet when the mobile access point has previously established an IP address in the first subnet; and loading the IP addressing information associated with the first subnet from the cache into an IP stack establishing, at the mobile access point, a layer 2 security association with an infrastructure access point in the first subnet using cached security information that had been previously stored; and establishing, at the mobile access point, a route to the infrastructure access point in the first subnet.