METHOD OF ENABLING MOBILITY OF CLIENT DEVICES IN LARGE SCALE UNIFIED NETWORKS

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a mechanism for enabling smooth, seamless, and reliable connectivity to wireless devices in a unified network.SOLUTION: A system supports roaming of mobile units across mobility switches. A given mobile unit can retain its IP address in both intra-subnet and inter-subnet roaming scenarios. The given mobile unit also retains its membership to a mobility VLAN to which it had been assigned, even during roaming. Embodiments include a framework for wireless switches to advertise VLANs they support to peer wireless switches in the mobility domain, and to advertise their capability to act as VLAN servers for those VLANs. Embodiments support VLAN membership management capabilities that allow access points and peer wireless switches to request wireless switches to add VLANs to the tunnels they share.