Patent ID: 8223687

Claim:
A system for providing redundancy in a communication network comprising: a first Home Agent acting as a backup Home Agent to a primary Home Agent, wherein the primary Home Agent provides mobility management functions for a plurality of mobile nodes and maintains a subscriber session for each mobile node processed by the primary Home Agent; the first Home Agent configured to receive a Hello Message from the primary Home Agent that is remotely located from the first Home Agent, wherein the Hello Message includes system attributes and information to determine a remote Home Agent's state; the first Home Agent configured to receive at least one Checkpoint Message from the second Home Agent which provides information for a plurality of subscriber sessions where each subscriber session includes information for a particular mobile node that is used by the primary Home Agent in providing mobility management for that mobile node; and the first Home Agent being able to transition to become the primary Home Agent to provide mobility management for the plurality of mobile nodes using redundant subscriber session information received from the primary Home Agent and to advertise primary Home Agent identification information into the routing domain using a routing protocol, which prompts network devices to route messages to the first Home Agent instead of the primary Home Agent; wherein the first Home Agent transitions to the primary Home Agent based on priority and state information in the Hello Message, wherein priority information is used to determine which Home Agent transitions to active.