GPRS traffic performance measurements

With the commercial deployment of the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) in Europe in 2001, traffic performance measurements in the field have become possible. Selected traffic performance measurement results are presented and compared to the traffic performance of fixed narrowband access technologies like ISDN and analog modem. They are based on a setup measuring the quality of service perceived by one and several mobile GPRS users running WWW and e-mail applications on laptops connected to GPRS terminals in one radio cell of the Vodafone NL GSM/GPRS network in Maastricht. They give an indication of the capabilities of the packet data service and can help to identify the system bottlenecks regarding end-to-end performance. The measurements were executed in the GPRS network and with GPRS-terminals, which were operational at that time but still in stages of improvement. With these cognitions, protocol optimizations can be performed and software problems like unnecessary delays and instabilities can be localized and eliminated. Additionally, the results can support the planning of networks and applications comparing the measured performance characteristics to the requirements of customers and applications performed. These results are compared to simulation results produced by a simulation/emulation tool that comprises load generators representing typical GPRS usage and a prototypical implementation of the GPRS protocols.