Continuing our year-end tip series on predictions for 2010, we cover the challenges to realizing the benefits of LTE’s “flat” IP architecture.
Prediction #3: Unless carriers deploy a high-bandwidth, Ethernet and IP/MPLS access and distribution network using fibre, they will not realize the true cost-reducing potential of “flat” IP.
First, there is a point of clarification: LTE is not flat; it’s flatter.
The RNC (radio network controller) is now amalgamated into the e-NodeB (which is responsible for providing the air interface channels for a mobile handset to listen and attach to a network) with the mobility and packet-core functions now residing in the MME (Mobility Management Entity), serving-gateway and PDN-gateway. So, with these new nodes, will better network costs be the result? Probably not.
Reason being, at least initially, the issue is that the serving gateway and PDN gateway will be nothing more than software upgrades to the carriers’ existing SGSN (Serving GPRS Support Node) and GGSN (Gateway GPRS Support Node), which -- at present -- are not based on the large-scale IP-MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) router platforms that constitute the core networks of large DSL/ISP or fixed network providers.
The e-NodeBs now need to have multiple IP tunnels between them to facilitate handover, creating an IP complexity in the access network that has never existed in the past. Until carriers deploy a high‑bandwidth, Ethernet, and IP/MPLS access and distribution network using fiber, either shared or self-built, it is unlikely that the true cost reducing potential of “flat” IP will ever be realized. In addition, simply adding LTE/EPC functionality to the existing network nodes is not enough; the specified 3GPP functionality of the EPC needs to be pushed closer to the edge of the network to enable true, flat IP networks for the transport of data across and between networks.
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