The Telecommunications Handbook: Engineering Guidelines for Fixed, Mobile and Satellite Systems

7 Data Networks

Jyrki T. J. Penttinen, Tero Jalkanen and Ilkka Keisala

7.1 Introduction

Data networks are the basic building blocks for a major part of the telecommunication services today. After the long history of circuit switched, analog telephony systems, the change towards digital and packet-based systems has been radical. The fast transition has provided totally new user experiences that support the high demands of the modern multimedia environment. Both fixed and wireless networks develop in a parallel way, in order to support ever growing demand. The need for speed is due to advanced applications and higher technical quality of contents, including transition to high definition video and audio, and advanced multimedia services like video conferencing. As the number of users is growing extremely quickly, the constant signaling caused by messaging types of services – even if the service itself would not require high bandwidth – creates challenges for the dimensioning of transport networks.

As the capacity is a potential limitation for the transport network itself, as well as for the addressing of the equipment, the evolution is going rapidly towards IPv6. It is important to handle the transition time correctly in order to have fluent functionality between networks that support the old technology, and those that contain the latest solutions.

7.2 IPv4

IP (Internet protocol) has been defined for the efficient delivery of the packet data. The base for IP are the routers ...