Method and system for connecting mobile client devices to the internet

摘要

An arrangement is disclosed for connecting mobile client devices MT to the Internet, or other IP based networks, using WPAN and WLAN infrastructures or certain cellular systems like GPRS. This is achieved substantially seamlessly by providing a routing mechanism (IP-IP Tunnel 14) that allows mobile client devices like Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to connect to an application server 10 using a plurality of communications standards depending on the available infrastructure, e.g. GPRS, IEEE802.11b or Bluetooth wireless standards. The arrangement proposed is a Layer 2 technique suitable for general use, in which the mobile client device MT and the server 10 are arranged in use to communicate at the network layer through an Internet Protocol tunneling technique, such that an Internet Protocol address of the mobile client MT remains the same during a handover from a first communications standard to a second communications standard.