Patent ID: 8630645

Claim:
A wireless communication system for communication with a mobile node and with a home agent providing mobility services for the mobile node, comprising: a serving gateway for communication with the mobile node; and a target gateway for communication with the mobile node, the target gateway for receiving a registration request from the mobile node and communicating a handoff request to the serving gateway including a request for a plurality of context identifiers, the context identifiers identifying a plurality of contexts to be handed off from the serving gateway to the target gateway for the mobile node; the serving gateway, responsive to the registration request, for communicating context information for the contexts identified by the plurality of context identifiers to the target gateway in a context transfer message, the context transfer message including a function type parameter that supports at least a handoff function type, a message type parameter that supports a plurality of message types for each function type, and a usage-specific parameter that supports a plurality of data parameters encoded in a type length value (TLV) format, and the target gateway further being for initializing the contexts at the target gateway using the requested context information, sending a handoff acknowledgement message to the serving gateway, processing packets after a handoff context has been initialized, and sending an acknowledgement message to the home agent after the one or more handoff contexts has been initialized, the acknowledgement message for causing the home agent to communicate with the mobile node via the target gateway rather than the serving gateway for communications directed to the mobile node, the context transfer message thus facilitating a handoff by synchronizing context information between the target gateway and the serving gateway.