In a Mobile Internet Protocol (IP) network, a mobile node (MN) may enter a foreign subnet, discover a foreign agent (FA) node by listening to Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) messages, and register itself with the FA node and a home agent (HA) node. The FA agent node may include a router coupled to the subnet near which the MN is currently located, and the HA node may include a router coupled to the original home subnet to which the MN is assigned.
Upon successful registrations, a remote node, which intends to communicate with the MN, may send messages to the HA, which then may encapsulate and tunnel the messages to the FA. The FA may recover the messages from the tunnel encapsulation and relay the messages to the MN using a layer 2 delivery network. In the reverse direction, the messages from the MN may be sent directly to the remote node.