User Speed Rates of GSM Technologies

Tremendous achievements of wireless world is providing more enjoyable lifestyle to us. Especially,  watching HD movies via stream is edge corner now for end users like me.

Mobile trend is growing rapidly. Following figure shows the interesting statical result from JohnHughes blog.

 Think about it, you are living with your search tool just in your pocket. You do not need to use any cable,device connection etc and you can reach internet very easly with sufficient speed generally. 

Because of the importance of smart phones, we are facing with enhancing wireless mobile telecommunication technologies day by day.

We are planning to explain actual speed rates of each technologies by starting with GPRS technologies briefly.
 

 2G technologies could not reach the Mbps speed rates unfortunately except EGPRS-2. EDGE has 237 kpbs DL speed theoretically. it varies between 120Kbps to 384Kbps practically for per user. Other name of EDGE is 2.75G.

With the introducing WCDMA, we have met superior speed rates. above picture demonstrates the performances of 3G and 4G techs.

Thi biggest issue for high speed wireless networks is the lack of bandwidth. We can say it also as range of usable frequencies. So we put following pictures from speedtest.net to compare pratical and theoretical results for user speed rates.

4G VERIZON USA
  

4G AVUSTRALIA

 4G TMO  EURO

Note: I checked the users fro this test and one user speed rate was 980.92 Mb/s within 188 total tests . I subtracted that one and recalculated the speed test and it was ~10Mbps like in Verizon USA.
 
Speed of Wireless techs has a lot of obstacles like total user, location and velocity, many type of interferences, total users  etc. But we can say , humanity has got very good achievements  about it during this decade and we can easily say that 4G is really great even though it can not be able to reach to wireline speeds at least these years.
 

REFERENCES
http://www.gsma.com/ 
http://autoblog.johnhughes.com.au 
http://www.speedguide.net/faq_in_q.php?qid=366 
http://www.radio-electronics.com/ 
http://www.speedtest.net
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-evdo.htm 
http://www.zdnet.com 

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LTE Security

Based mobile networks supporting a rapidly growing number of computationally powerful devices  such as  smartphones and tablets is changing the mobile security landscape and will fundamentally 
change the way we perceive and deal with mobile security. Mobile networks are becoming more

pervasive, more widely used, and more deeply connected to other network.

 

Devices and the core network are most heavily targeted parts of the mobile network.



Basicaly we can separate the security as for subscriber authentication and attacking to mobile to core devices.

Authentication procedures use very complex algorithms, personally it is not a big threat for mobile operators. By the way, we are starting with authentication very briefly

Authentication
   
Operators like Verizon in USA are using 3GPP  SNOW 3G Specification for Confidentiality and Integrity Algorithms UEA2 & UIA2, 128-EEA1 & 128-EIA1.
  
SIM means Subscriber Identity Module (SIM). All wireless mobile technologies have different type of SIM cards. For example,USIM is using in 3G Sim cards with Milenage Authentication. Before 3G, we were using A3 and A8 authentication algorithms. 

A3/A8 had some weakness, that enable attackers to break the encryption key in less than one second, breaching customer’s identity and allowing billing fraud and  putting telecom operators in a serious legal situation.

The older SIM cards are not compatible and may not be used in LTE.

Security the keys used are128 bits in LTE.

  
Important: Mobile Phone has to support SNOW 3G algorithm.

 Securing LTE Backhaul

 

Most attacks will be directed at the mobile core network, external sites, and subscriber data and devices, but they can also be more limited in scope and target a single eNB or a group of nearby eNBs (eNB identity spoofing and impersonation).Tampering, traffic hijacking, eavesdropping, DoS,compromised control data,unauthorized access,and loss of accountability of the control plane are the biggest threats to the core network.

To secure traffic,as an my personal opinions based on my researches an IPsec tunnel has to be established between the eNB,and the MME, SGW and O&M in the core network over the user,control and management plane, and terminated at a SEG (security gateways) that sits at the border of the trusted area.

REFERENCES
http://www.mcit.gov.sa/nr/rdonlyres/d762830c-fbe7-4b36-aafc-780cfbafc92c/0/paper36.pdf 
http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Information/presentations/presentations_2011/2011_05_Bangalore/DZBangalore290511.pdf
http://support.verizonwireless.com/faqs/VZAccess/4g_sim_card.html
http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/21395/how-is-4g-lte-encrypted
http://www.etsi.org/index.php/services/security-algorithms/3gpp-algorithms
http://www.authentec.com/Products/EmbeddedSecurity/SemiconductorIP/3G4GLTECiphers.aspx
http://itmf.uga.edu/minutes/2011-03-03/verizon_presentation.pdf
http://www.embedded.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/ip-eda-products/4212398/Elliptic-launches-security-processing-engine-for-4G-wireless-markets
http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/cellulartelecomms/lte-long-term-evolution/lte-security-authentication.php
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140366410003105
http://www.slideshare.net/aliirfan04/lte-security-overview
http://www.f5.com/pdf/white-papers/wireless-security-lte-networks-wp.pdf
http://internetandwebsecurity.blogspot.com/2010/10/radisys-introduces-carrier-grade-lte.html
http://www.tellabs.com/resources/papers/tlab_ipsec_wp.pdf

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