Measures for optimized signaling in relay-enhanced access networks exemplarily include receipt of at least one signaling message concerning at least one relay node of a relay-enhanced access network over at least one predetermined signaling interface, concentration of signaling concerning a respective relay node in terms of irrelevancy and/or redundancy from the at least one signaling message, and forwarding of the concentrated signaling in a signaling message over the at least one predetermined signaling interface towards the respective relay node. These measures may exemplarily be applied for optimizing X2 messaging in relay-enhanced LTE access networks.