Patent ID: 7272123

Claim:
In a wireless communications network having a plurality of base stations and a context transfer server, a method for processing handoff requests between a source base station and a destination base station, comprising the steps, performed by the destination base station, of: requesting, from the source base station, an identifier associated with each of a plurality of active mobile nodes registered on the source base station; retrieving, from the context transfer server, a context associated with each identified mobile node; storing the retrieved contexts in a local cache; receiving a handoff request from a first mobile node, the first mobile node having an associated context stored in the local cache; and applying the stored context to the first mobile node, wherein the destination base station discovers an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the source base station by performing a handoff process with the source base station, the handoff process including the IP address of the source base station, and storing the IP address of the source base station in the local cache.