Mobility management of osi connections between cell towers

A communications apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of interconnected cell-towers wirelessly connectable to a portable user equipment, each such cell-tower being operable to extract an Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) layer 4 protocol connection from an underlying cellular protocol, the communications apparatus further comprising control means operable to:
• detect that said user equipment has a broken-out layer 4 connection;
• detect that said user equipment, with the broken-out layer 4 connection, has moved from a first cell-tower to a second cell-tower;
• tunnel, by a processor, traffic for an existing layer 4 connection from the user equipment between the first cell-tower and the second cell-tower;
• identify a predetermined trigger event;
• and
• in response to the predetermined trigger event occurring, migrate an ongoing bidirectional flow of data packets from the user equipment over to layer 4 connections maintained at the second cell-tower.

A computer program product for moving Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) layer 4 connections seamlessly between a user equipment connected wirelessly to a series of cell-towers, wherein an OSI layer 4 connection is extracted out of the underlying cellular protocols at said cell-towers, and wherein the computer program product comprises a computer readable storage medium having program code embodied therewith, the program code readable and executable by a processor to perform a method comprising:

• detecting that said user equipment has a broken-out layer 4 connection;
• detecting that said user equipment, with the broken-out layer 4 connection, has moved from a first cell-tower to a second cell-tower;
• tunnelling, by a processor, traffic for an existing layer 4 connection from the user equipment between the first cell-tower and the second cell-tower;
• identifying a predetermined trigger event;
• and
• in response to the predetermined trigger event occurring, migrating an ongoing bidirectional flow of data packets from the user equipment over to layer 4 connections maintained at the second cell-tower.