Patent ID: 8462770

Claim:
A machine-implemented method for processing network traffic of a packet network, the method comprising: determining, at an Internet access offload (IAO) gateway (IAO-GW), whether a packet of data is destined for the Internet, in response to receiving the packet from a radio network controller (RNC) of a radio access network (RAN), the packet originated from a user equipment (UE) of the RAN; establishing a GPRS tunneling protocol (GTP) tunnel between the RNC and the IAO-GW such that data exchanged through the GTP tunnel is directly routed to the Internet at IAO-GW without going through the SGSN of the 3GPP packet core network, including substituting, via the IAO-GW, a first transport layer address in a radio access bearer (RAB) assignment request received from the SGSN with second transport layer address, the first transport layer address being an IP address of the SGSN and the second transport layer address being an IP address of the IAO-GW, and transmitting the RAB assignment request having the second transport layer address to the RNC to complete the RAB assignment for the UE and to create the GTP tunnel between the RNC and the IAO-GW; routing the packet directly to the Internet without sending the packet to the SGSN of the packet core network, if the packet is destined to the Internet; and routing the packet to the SGSN of the 3GPP packet core network if the packet is not destined for the Internet.