Patent ID: 8243686

Claim:
A method for wireless communications, comprising: operating first and second access networks to provide wireless service to wireless devices, wherein the first and second access networks are associated with respective first and second gateways; operating the first gateway to (1) receive a request for transferring wireless service of a wireless device from the second access network to the first access network and (2) send a message, that includes key information, to the second gateway based on the request, the key information comprising a uplink key to forward uplink data packets associated with the wireless device to the first gateway and a downlink key to forward downlink data packets associated with the wireless device to the first gateway; operating the second gateway to (1) send session context information to the first gateway in response to the message and (2) forward a data packet associated with the wireless device to the first gateway, wherein forwarding the data packet comprises sending one of the keys that corresponds to a type of the data packet; and operating the first gateway to handle the forwarded data packet based on the session context information and the key that corresponds to the type of the data packet; wherein operating the second gateway to forward the data packet comprises: including an uplink data packet from the wireless device in a forwarding packet; including the uplink key in the forwarding packet; sending the forwarding packet to the first gateway; and including a session reference identifier (SR-ID) in the forwarding packet to identify a user session associated with the wireless device; and wherein the session context information comprises information that associates multiple Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the wireless device with multiple SR-IDs, respectively.