Bell Labs Looks Inside Wireless NetworksAnd finds simple e-mail to be a bigger resource hog than previously thought...
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old news - 10:03AM Tuesday Mar 11 2008)
tags: business · wireless · hardware · bandwidth · networkingTipped by DrTCP 
DrTCP
submits an
Associated Press report on Alcatel-Lucent's new "
9900 Wireless Network Guardian," a device that gives wireless carriers unprecedented insight into the workings of their networks.
"This
news is interesting because mobile operators think that full Internet data access puts more strain on their network so it should be priced more. But the analysis of data by this box is suggesting that mobile data network access might be more efficient than the operators are pricing it."
That's because the strains data subscribers place on the wireless network don't match the amount of data they download, Schabel said. The new device will tell carriers that some types of traffic, like e-mail and instant messaging, consume up to 1,000 times as much air time as file downloads. "If I look at mobile e-mail, one megabyte takes two hours of air time," he said, because the mobile network needs to repeatedly set up and tear down the connection. In contrast, a 1-megabyte file from a peer-to-peer file-sharing network takes about 30 seconds to download, he estimated.
Previous network and radio-frequency monitoring tools didn't allow carriers to understand their networks as exhaustively. The new Bell Labs device allows them to understand how customer use of a various applications consumes airtime instead of simply monitoring the overall packet load.
Last we checked, pricing in the wireless industry often couldn't care less about the realities of the network, and it's doubtful greater network insight will change that. What this device will change is the amount of traffic shaping on 3G & 4G networks, for better or worse.
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