Method and Apparatus for Providing WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) Anchor Mode Service on a System with Distributed Forwarding Planes

摘要

Transferring a mobile node from one ASN-GW (anchor access service network gateway) to another ASN-GW is referred to as a hand-over. To facilitate transfer of data for the hand-over, a GRE (generic routing encapsulation) tunnel is established between the two ASN-GWs. Traffic through the GRE tunnel arriving at a line card of an ASN-GW is redirected from the arrival line card to the one line card that contains information for the mobile node. The redirection is based on traversal of one or more tables on the line cards. These tables are indexed according to GRE keys corresponding to the mobile nodes. Therefore, the appropriate line card for the traffic can be identified quickly and efficiently using a distributed forwarding plane with minimal provisioning overhead, resulting in lower latency during the hand-over.