Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but maintain some editorial control so as to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
During your average day how many times do you speak or text on your smartphone, browse on your tablet, or work on your laptop? In the evenings you may read e-books, message from your mobile, or check your Facebook. You go on vacation and watch videos while waiting for the plane, take pictures with your phone and send them to friends back home. You leave your Skype or instant messenger open on your tablet so you can always see who among your contacts are available for a quick chat. In short, you are always connected to the network, meaning that the mobile operator’s processingbehind the scenes to support all your data communications is always on, and has now become a critical factor in the performance of the mobile network. And the trend to use the mobile network for data is growing in leaps and bounds. That is reasoning behind 4G technologies like LTE, right?
Yes, but. What network planners are a bit slow to address – and the industry’s analysts and journalists even slower – are the massive implications these always-on connections have on a network’s signaling system – and how signaling is catapulted due to these always-on connections. And most importantly, how surges or misdirected flows in signaling can impair network performance, and in some cases, bring the network to crash.
Your mobile network is moving to IP
To support your constant use of the Internet through your cellular network, your mobile operator is empowering its network with Internet Protocol with many additional elements. These elements will enable your service provider to give you the services promised by 4G. However, all these elements must communicate with each other using what is known as a signaling protocol that can support millions of subscribers accessing the Internet all the time. The particular signaling protocol selected by the telecommunication industryis known as Diameter protocol.
Diameter: The chosen standard
The organizations who set international standards in the telecommunications industry (such as 3GPP and ETSI) have selected Diameter as the signaling protocol to enable operators to support 4G services. Why is that? Because Diameter is the only signaling protocol that is flexible enough to manage the constant flow of core network signaling in an environment that has become far more complex than anything the industry has experienced in the past, and can be configured to innovative signaling solutions to fulfill the promises of 4G.
Fulfilling the promises of LTE mobile technology
Today’s mobile network operator growth is fueled by data traffic; voice has become secondary. On paper, LTE and other IP-based technologies have made amazing promises to provide you with high quality mobile broadband, sophisticated services, tiered charging plans, better roaming schemes and much more. However, the implementation of all these promised services takes place in the core network and requires signaling that will tackle the challenges for cost-effective connectivity, scalability and control in the section of the network known as the control plane.
Data brings complexity
In fact, your mobile operator’s focus on data will only increase in time as the initiatives of voice over LTE take hold, introducing a network where everything is data. Access to data, meaning the Web, video, SMS, MMS, presence and VoIP, requires constant Diameter signaling with a spaghetti of network nodes and interfaces. Network operators need a mix of Diameter solutions such as gateways to connect the new IP elements to the legacy ones, load balancers for scalability so operators can continue to grow the network easily, and routers that ensure the messages from each subscriber go to the right places – in short, to support communications that are becoming increasingly complicated.
Using diameter to control the complexity
Once upon a time, network signaling was activated when a phone call began and ended when the speakers hung up. Now this scenario is no longer relevant, and your mobile operator has far greater challenges to solve. The only way for your mobile operator to successfully manageits network is to focus on its control plane with the right signaling products that provide cost effective, robust and intelligent solutions.
You may not be a telecom engineer, but you want to know that your network will respond rapidly to your request the next time you pick up your tablet or mobile device. Whether you want to send a message home, check your train’s timetable or download an app, you want fast communications. You want to know that if you took a family plan, your daughter’s phone charges will be sent to the correct server and she will receive the data you paid for, even if she just entered college in Austin, and you live in Boston. If you are on a business trip and are handicapped by poor connections due to insufficient roaming connectivity, you will care.
In summary, it doesn’t take a telecom engineer to understand that almost everything you do with your mobile device depends on data communications, and that the right Diameter solution is the key ingredient for high performance, excellent quality of service, and advanced service enablement.
