Efficient steering for user equipments in either an idle state or a connected state

An apparatus comprising a processing system for operating a user equipment, the processing system comprising:

• circuitry configured to:
• store in the at least one memory at least a first set of thresholds and a second set of thresholds for use in offloading traffic to a wireless local area network, wherein
• at least the first set of thresholds and the second set of thresholds are received from a wireless wide area network, and
• the first set of thresholds comprise different thresholds corresponding to different types of data to be offloaded, and
• the second set of thresholds comprise different thresholds corresponding to different classifications of different access nodes operating in one or more wireless local area networks;
• utilize the threshold corresponding to a given type of data to evaluate whether an access node operating in the wireless local area network is suitable for offloading data of the given type;
• and
• utilize the evaluated access node for offloading only the data of the given type only if the evaluated access node is determined to be suitable using the threshold corresponding to the classification of the evaluated access node;
• determine at the user equipment that there are a plurality of access node candidates operating in the one or more wireless local area networks;
• and
• store each of the access node candidates in the local memory within one of a plurality of candidate groups, each candidate group corresponding to one of the different classifications for which there is a different threshold in the second set.

A user equipment comprising:

• circuitry configured to:
• store a first set of thresholds and a second set of thresholds for use in offloading traffic to a wireless local area network, wherein the first set of thresholds comprise different thresholds corresponding to different types of data to be offloaded, and the second set of thresholds comprise different thresholds corresponding to different classifications of different access nodes operating in one or more wireless local area networks;
• determine at the user equipment that there are a plurality of access node candidates operating in the one or more wireless local area networks;
• store each of the access node candidates in the local memory within one of a plurality of candidate groups, each candidate group corresponding to one of the different classifications for which there is a different threshold in the second set;
• utilize the threshold corresponding to a given type of data to evaluate whether one of the plurality of access nodes operating in the wireless local area network is suitable for offloading data of the given type;
• and
• utilize the evaluated access node for offloading only the data of the given type only if the evaluated access node is determined to be suitable using the threshold corresponding to the classification of the evaluated access node.