Chapter 11
GSM and IP: Ingredients of Convergence
The big picture in this chapter and the next is to trace the development of the latest wireless networks from two main starting points:
- The old telephone network, extended to wireless phones with first-generation systems such as AMPS (the advanced mobile phone system), and later, second-generation systems such as GSM
- The data networking world, which is becoming predominantly about TCP/IP networking
The two starting points are quite some distant apart; for example, the old telephone network, AMPS, and GSM use circuit switching and related protocols, whereas TCP/IP is a packet-switched protocol. We will see how additions and changes to wireless networks such as GSM have led to increasing capability for these networks to go beyond mainly supporting mobile voice services, to providing data support as well. The addition of GPRS is one example of such an addition. We will also see how additions and changes to TCP/IP, to help it to better support voice, QoS, mobility, and so on, are ways that the data networking world has been moving to provide better wireless support. Such trends have been leading to convergence toward an “all-IP” wireless network. Recent systems such as WiMAX, and perhaps more so, LTE, can be seen as instantiations of wireless all-IP networks.
We begin this chapter with an introduction to the network aspects of a second-generation wireless cellular system, as typified by GSM. We introduced IP networking in Chapter ...
