Patent ID: 8924527

Claim:
A method comprising: sending a request from a mobility management entity (MME) to a domain name system (DNS) server to retrieve information regarding a gateway to handle a new session; receiving, at the MME, a list of gateway addresses from the DNS server in response to the request that corresponds to a complete set of gateways available to handle a new session; identifying, at the MME, a first set of gateways out of the complete set of gateways which are geographically located within a dynamically-resizable tracking area (TA); resizing, at the MME, the dynamically-resizable TA based on evaluating network load information for each of the gateways in the first set of gateways; identifying, at the MME, a second set of gateways out of the complete set of gateways which are geographically located within the newly resized dynamically-resizable TA, wherein the second set of gateways is different from the first set of gateways; and selecting, at the MME, a gateway from the second set of gateways to handle the new session.