Smart router

Abstract

A gateway router is positioned at a boundary of a local area network and a wide area network. The gateway router supports hand-off among client devices and/or user accounts for network communications sessions with a network device of the wide area network. The gateway router further supports content sharing among client devices and/or user accounts via the gateway router over the local area network. Data resources in the form of account information, files, applications, session state information, etc. may be stored at the gateway router to facilitate hand-off and/or content sharing among the clients of the local area network.

1 . A method for a gateway router, the method comprising:
 establishing a network communications session in the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model for a first client device of a wireless local area network with a network device of a wide area network via the gateway router, the gateway router positioned at a boundary between the wireless local area network and the wide area network;   associating the first client device with a client identity;   obtaining state information at an application layer (Layer 7) in the OSI model for the network communications session for the first client device, the state information including a browser cookie or a web cookie communicated between the first client device and the network device via the gateway router during the network communications session;   storing the state information for the network communications session in a profile of the client identity;   receiving a request to associate a second client device of the wireless local area network with the client identity; and   establishing continuation of the network communications session on the second client device of the wireless local area network with the network device via the gateway router based, at least in part, on the state information for the network communications session stored in the profile of the client identity associated with the second client device.