Patent ID: 8599800

Claim:
A method of assigning an access terminal identifier to a mobile node, comprising: receiving a request at an access terminal home agent of a radio access network (RAN), the request requesting an access terminal identifier for a mobile node, the access terminal identifier identifying a communication session of the mobile node and configured to operate as an Internet Protocol (IP) address by which a packet data network routes packets to the mobile node, the same access terminal identifier configured to operate as a unicast access terminal identifier (UATI) with respect to the RAN in order to facilitate communicating information from a previous RAN device to a next RAN device, where the access terminal identifier includes a base station identifier of a previous base station that allows a next base station to identify the previous base station, the information describing the communication session identified by the access terminal identifier; assigning, by the access terminal home agent, at least a prefix of the access terminal identifier to the mobile node, the prefix indicating a first portion of the access terminal identifier, the prefix assigned according to a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) procedure; and providing at least the prefix of the access terminal identifier to the mobile node.