25-08-2014, 02:46 PM
THE ROLE OF INTERNET TECHNOLOGY
IN FUTURE MOBILE DATA SYSTEMS
THE ROLE OF INTERNET TECHNOLOGY.pdf (Size: 68.7 KB / Downloads: 27)
Abstract
Mobile telephony and the Internet are the fastest growing
businesses in the telecommunications market. This is why most
operators and service providers are looking after the
development of new services in both sectors and newcomers are
expected to enter the arena. The mobile operators foresee an
increasing share of their revenues coming from new data
services, whilst Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are
attracted from wireless technology and mobility services both
to reduce costs within the last-mile segment and to enrich
their market share providing ubiquitous access to the Internet
and corporate intranets.
In this scenario several wireless overlay networks will
coexist and their interworking will be a challenging
objective. The employment of the Internet technology, with its
novel mobility and security extensions, seems to be the most
attractive option for achieving that goal. In addition, the
migration to a full IP network architecture even within each
specific wireless domain will be another promising
opportunity, already under consideration within several
technical and standardization bodies.
The envisioned role of Internet technology makes it worthwhile
undertaking significant research efforts on the development of
innovative IP based mobile data systems and opens promising
opportunities for both telcos and Internet Service Providers.
Introduction
Mobile telephony and the Internet are the fastest growing
businesses in the telecommunications market. This is why most
operators and service providers are looking after the
development of new services in both sectors and newcomers are
expected to enter the arena. The mobile operators foresee an
increasing share of their revenues coming from new data
services, whilst Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are
attracted from wireless technology and mobility services both
to reduce costs within the last-mile segment and to enrich
their market potential providing ubiquitous access to the
Internet and corporate intranets.
The present deregulated market will foster the emergence of
many actors offering a variety of mobile data services over
several wireless overlay networks to match different specific
user needs. In this scenario, the deployment of innovative
wireless data networks, the integration with the Internet and
the interworking between different wireless technologies will
be challenging objectives for competitive service providers.
This paper, starting from the analysis of the current
development of service offerings and the available
technologies, focuses on the main evolutionary trends,
envisioning a key role for the Internet technology in the
future mobile data systems.
Mobility within the Internet
The increasing diffusion of portable devices, such as laptops,
PDAs and smart phones, have recently led to a growing demand
for access to the Internet and corporate intranets independent
of the technology and the point of attachment. Today's ISPs
cope with these new user needs by offering a set of dial-up
services including remote Internet access as well as secure
access to corporate intranets established by means of
tunneling protocols like PPP [5], L2TP [6] and IPSec [7].
Besides, most of current ISPs have joined together in
confederations (e.g. iPass [8] and GRIC [9]) to provide
network access on a wider area and in a cost effective way.
New technologies for user roaming among ISPs have been
deployed so that the professional on the move can access the
services he has subscribed with his home ISP without having to
afford a long distance call to his hometown, but just by
setting up a dial-up connection to the nearest Network Access
Server (NAS) managed by any of the confederation members.
A further ongoing evolution is the provision of wireless
access to mobile Internet users, so that they can stay on-line
even while moving, and take advantage of seamless user
mobility. Available options include the use of cheap WLAN
solutions (e.g. IEEE 802.11 [10], Bluetooth [11], HomeRF [12],
etc.) in indoor environments and the exploitation of the
wireless coverage provided by existing satellite or cellular
operators in urban and rural outdoor areas. In addition, the
first mobile ISPs offering wireless access to the users by
their own are appearing as well. For example, Metricom [13] is
currently delivering metropolitan wireless IP services (up to
28.8 kbps) in the US by means of a spread-spectrum wireless
system operating within the US license-free (902-928 MHz)
portion of the radio spectrum. More of such metropolitan
mobile ISPs are expected to appear in the near future even
outside the US, where the license-free ISM (Industrial,
Scientific and Medical) bands available in the 2.4 GHz and 5-
60 GHz spectrum range could be exploited.
The main drawback of the above solutions is that mobility
management is not performed at the IP layer but is handled
almost completely by the underlying wireless infrastructure.
This may lead to sub-optimal traffic routing and does not
allow seamless user mobility across different wireless media.
To overcome this problem, innovative protocols for handling
mobility at the IP layer are being developed by the IETF
(Internet Engineering Task Force)
Conclusion
The evolution of mobile data services outlines a trend towards
the coexistence of a variety of wireless overlay networks
managed by several actors and covering both indoor and outdoor
environments. The Internet technology, with its novel mobility
and security extensions, appears to be the most attractive for
the interworking between wireless data networks, as it has
proved for the wired data networks since the past two decades.
The migration to a full IP network architecture even within
each specific wireless domain will be another promising
opportunity, already under consideration within several
technical and standardization bodies. Anyway, it is foreseen
that the deployment of a full IP wireless network will be
feasible in the medium/short term only in indoor environments
or in the case of newcomer operators. Established PLMN
operators, which are delivering voice services over densely
populated areas, will probably face the migration to full IP
network architectures only in the longer term.
The envisioned role of Internet technology makes it worthwhile
to undertake significant research efforts on the development
of innovative IP based mobile data systems and opens promising
opportunities for both telcos and ISPs. The mobile telephone
operators will have the chance to enter the Internet market
providing wireless access to third party IP networks or
becoming themselves full Internet ISPs. The ISPs will have the
opportunity to offer seamless mobility services either by
themselves or relying on existing wireless infrastructures
provided by traditional operators. Finally, a significant
level of integration between the mobile data services deployed
by the mobile telephone operators and the Internet Service
Providers is likely to take place in the near future