Performance and architecture of SGSN and GGSN of general packet radio service (GPRS)

GPRS is an emerging ETSI standard for exchanging packet-mode data using the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) networks. This paper presents a platform architecture (hardware & software), which can act either as SGSN (serving GPRS support node) or GGSN (gateway GPRS support node) or both combined. SGSN and GGSN are two new network elements required for supporting GPRS services. We present the functionality partitioning of GPRS application for one of the possible implementations on this platform to realize these new network elements and present performance results, which have been obtained from a queueing network model.