Patent ID: 7058728

Claim:
A method of initiating compression of an Internet Protocol (IP) header of packets of a stream of packets to be sent from a source apparatus to a destination apparatus in a packet switched network, said source apparatus being connected to said packet switched network by a first node and said destination apparatus being connected to said packet switched network by a second node, said method comprising the steps of: modifying, at said first node, the IP header of a first full header packet of the stream of packets from the source apparatus so that a destination address field of the IP header of the first full header packet contains a second node address indicating a location of the second node, the second node address being different than a destination address indicating a location of the destination apparatus; inserting, at the first node, a routing header in the first full header packet of the stream of packets, said routing header having context identification (CID) information identifying information of the IP header and the destination address indicating the location of the destination apparatus; transmitting, from the first node to the second node, said first full header packet including the modified IP header and the inserted routing header; and initiating at the first node, header compression of IP headers of packets of the stream of packets subsequent to the first full header packet, when the second node receives said first full header packet including the modified IP header and the inserted routing header, wherein IP layer functionality is relied upon to establish a context in which compression is performed.