Patent ID: 8565185

Claim:
A method for proactively establishing a security association between a mobile node in a visiting network and an authentication agent in another network to which the mobile node can move, comprising: negotiating pre-authentication using a flag in a message header that indicates whether the communication is for establishing a pre-authentication security association; and said mobile node initiating pre-authentication by transmitting a message with the flag set in its message header, and said authentication agent responding with the flag set in its message header only if it supports the pre-authentication; whereby establishing a pre-authentication security association before said mobile node moves from said visiting network to said another network; further including performing said pre-authentication using a link-layer agnostic network access authentication protocol between said mobile node and said authentication agent at a server on the another network; and wherein said visiting network is for a first-media and said another network is for a different-media, wherein either said first-media is cellular and said different-media is wireless local area network (LAN) or said first-media is wireless local area network (LAN) and said different-media is cellular.