Method and system for soft handoff

A multicast address method for facilitating communication between nodes in "all IP" architectures that support CDMA soft handoff via IP multicasting wherein a multicast DHCP server allocates IP multicast addresses to mobile terminals from administratively scoped IP multicast addresses. IP multicast addresses are allocated to mobile terminals by offering, assigning, and distributing IP multicast addresses to the mobile terminals in response to IP multicast address requests from the mobile terminals to the multicast DHCP servers, which use unique mobile terminal identifiers to correlate mobile terminals with their prior and current IP multicast addresses. A multicast agent generates unicast IP address tables that map each of the unicast IP addresses, and edge routers use the unicast IP address tables to replace unicast IP addresses with their corresponding IP multicast address.