Patent attributes
A data offloading path establishing method and device, for addressing a problem in which an eNB cannot offload a part of the traffic thereof to a WLAN network. The method comprises: determining, by a base station, that a user equipment (UE) is connected to a specified wireless local area network (WLAN) network, and transmitting a request message to the WLAN network; receiving, by the base station, a returned response message to the request message from the WLAN network; and transmitting, by the base station, an acknowledgement message of path switching to the UE to inform the UE that a path for offloading from the base station to the WLAN network is successfully established. Thereby, a part of the traffic originally to be transmitted via the base station can be offloaded to a WLAN access network, thus improving radio utilization rate of a 3GPP access network.