A broad aspect of the invention provides a method of providing mobility support
for a mobile node's traffic. The method involves maintaining context information
for the mobile node on each of a first plurality of network nodes carrying the
traffic; and proactively transferring and maintaining at least a portion of the
context information in a plurality of network nodes which are not carrying the
traffic, but which are candidates for carrying the traffic due to mobility of the
mobile node. The method typically further involves defining and maintaining a definition
of the second plurality of network nodes. In one embodiment of the invention, this
involves adding a particular network node to the second plurality when the particular
network node becomes a candidate for carrying the traffic, removing a particular
network node from the second plurality when the particular network node is no longer
a candidate for carrying the traffic. Furthermore, for each node in the second
plurality of network nodes, a definition is made of a node in the first plurality
of network nodes from which to obtain the context information.