Public wireless networks

In the past years wireless networks have become more popular than wired networks for end user devices. Apart from WLANs based on Wi-Fi, public wireless networks based on GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, and HSDPA are getting more used every day. The reason is obvious – public wireless networks provide freedom to move around for mobile users and provide connectivity from places where wired connections are impossible (like on the road).

Public wireless networks are much less reliable than private. Users moving around will often temporarily lose connectivity, and bad signals lead to frequent re-sending of network packets. The bandwidth is also much lower than when using private networks; noise and other signal interference, usage of available bandwidth by (many) other users and retransmissions lead to low effective bandwidth per end point.

GSM, GPRS and EDGE
Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is the world's most popular standard for mobile telephone systems in which both signaling and speech channels are digital. This technology is also called 1G: the first-generation of mobile technology.

General packet radio service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data service providing data rates of 56 to 114 kbit/s based on GSM technology. This technology is also called 2G.

Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), also known as Enhanced GPRS or 2.5G, allows improved data transmission rates as a backward-compatible extension of GSM. EDGE delivers data rates up to 384 kbit/s.

UMTS (3G) / HSDPA
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is an umbrella term for the third-generation (3G) mobile telecommunications transmission standard. UMTS is also known as FOMA or W-CDMA. Compared to GSM, UMTS requires new base stations and new frequency allocations, but it uses a core network derived from GSM, ensuring backward compatibility. UMTS was designed to provide maximum data transfer rates of 45 Mbit/s.

High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is part of the UMTS standard, providing a maximum speed of 7.2 Mbit/s. HSDPA+ is also known as HSDPA Evolution and Evolved HSDPA. It is an upgrade to HSDPA networks, providing 42 Mbit/s download and 11.5 Mbit/s upload speeds.

LTE (4G)
LTE (Long Term Evolution) is a 4G network technology, designed from the start to transport data (IP packets) rather than voice. LTE is a set of enhancements to UMTS. In order to use LTE, the core UMTS network must be adapted, leading to changes in the transmitting equipment. The LTE specification provides download peak rates of at least 100 Mbit/s (up to 326 Mbit/s), and an upload speed of at least 50 Mbit/s (up to 86.4 Mbit/s).

LTE is not designed to handle voice transmissions. When placing or receiving a voice call, LTE handsets will typically fall back to old 2G or 3G networks for the duration of the call. In 2015, the Voice over LTE (VoLTE) protocol is about to be rolled out to allow the decommissioning of the old 2G and 3G networks in the future.


This entry was posted on Thursday 24 December 2015

Earlier articles

Quantum computing

Security at cloud providers not getting better because of government regulation

The cloud is as insecure as its configuration

Infrastructure as code

DevOps for infrastructure

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

(Hyper) Converged Infrastructure

Object storage

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV)

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

What's the point of using Docker containers?

Identity and Access Management

Using user profiles to determine infrastructure load

Public wireless networks

Supercomputer architecture

Desktop virtualization

Stakeholder management

x86 platform architecture

Midrange systems architecture

Mainframe Architecture

Software Defined Data Center - SDDC

The Virtualization Model

What are concurrent users?

Performance and availability monitoring in levels

UX/UI has no business rules

Technical debt: a time related issue

Solution shaping workshops

Architecture life cycle

Project managers and architects

Using ArchiMate for describing infrastructures

Kruchten’s 4+1 views for solution architecture

The SEI stack of solution architecture frameworks

TOGAF and infrastructure architecture

The Zachman framework

An introduction to architecture frameworks

How to handle a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack

Architecture Principles

Views and viewpoints explained

Stakeholders and their concerns

Skills of a solution architect architect

Solution architects versus enterprise architects

Definition of IT Architecture

What is Big Data?

How to make your IT "Greener"

What is Cloud computing and IaaS?

Purchasing of IT infrastructure technologies and services

IDS/IPS systems

IP Protocol (IPv4) classes and subnets

Infrastructure Architecture - Course materials

Introduction to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Fire prevention in the datacenter

Where to build your datacenter

Availability - Fall-back, hot site, warm site

Reliabilty of infrastructure components

Human factors in availability of systems

Business Continuity Management (BCM) and Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

Performance - Design for use

Performance concepts - Load balancing

Performance concepts - Scaling

Performance concept - Caching

Perceived performance

Ethical hacking

The first computers

Open group ITAC /Open CA Certification


Recommended links

Ruth Malan
Gaudi site
Esther Barthel's site on virtualization
Eltjo Poort's site on architecture


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The postings on this site are my opinions and do not necessarily represent CGI’s strategies, views or opinions.

 

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