Patent ID: 8638717

Claim:
A system for maintaining a communication session comprising: a home gateway connected to the Internet; a foreign gateway connected to the Internet comprising a foreign Wi-Fi access point (AP), wherein the home gateway communicates with the foreign gateway via a first tunnel operating over the Internet between the home gateway and the foreign gateway and wherein the foreign gateway communicates with a hybrid device via the foreign Wi-Fi AP; a cellular data network, wherein the Internet is accessible to the cellular data network; and the hybrid device comprising: a Wi-Fi transceiver; a virtual IP address assigned by the home gateway to the hybrid device and assigned by the hybrid device to the Wi-Fi transceiver; and a cellular transceiver, wherein the hybrid device is configured to perform operations comprising: establishing using, the cellular transceiver a second tunnel from the hybrid device to the home gateway over the Internet via the cellular data network upon occurrence of a first transition condition in a Wi-Fi link between the Wi-Fi transceiver and the foreign Wi-Fi AP while maintaining a communication session between the hybrid device and the home gateway via the first tunnel; reassigning, the virtual IP address from the Wi-Fi transceiver to the cellular transceiver upon occurrence of a second transition condition to transition the communication session between the hybrid device and the home gateway from the first tunnel to the second tunnel; and sending packets to the home gateway over the cellular transceiver via the second tunnel when the transition is complete.