Aspects of the disclosure provide systems and methods for establishing one or more Distributed Gateways located close to a location of a UE to facilitate faster packet delivery to the UE during transitions. Such transitions can include the UE transitioning its state, for example from being idle to connected to the network, but also includes operations in which the serving AP(s) for the UE changes. The method includes establishing at least two virtual network function (VNF) components (VFNCs) of a distributed gateway (D-GW), each VNFC associated with an access point (AP). Each VNFC buffers packets directed to the wireless device. The method further includes selecting at least one AP for serving the wireless device, and forwarding the buffered packets from the VNFC associated with the selected APs to the selected APs for forwarding to the wireless device. Packets buffered at the VNFCs of non-selected APs are discarded.