Method and apparatus for providing a solution to the handoff problem includes negotiation of new media codes (coders/decoders) for utilization in cases where the two devices involved in the handoff are incompatible. Although mobile IP (MIP) is presently utilized to perform handoff procedures, this technique lacks a trigger mechanism to initiate handoff between two different devices which communicate with two different networks or one common network. In addition, MIP does not address the issue of compatibilities between media types, codes and supported bit rate. The handoff utilizes a session protocol (SIP) message for handoff.