<p>This thesis aims to investigate a method and tool for emulation of the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) core network needed as an environment to test the routing functionality. GPRS is the most widely adopted mobile packet data delivery technology in the world. It utilizes an Intranet Protocol (IP)-based core network and involves significant changes to the way the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) air interface is structured. It also forms the basis of the future structure of mobile network transmission and switching.</p><p>The Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) is the most fundamental node in GPRS. Ericsson produces and manages an increasing number of SGSN nodes in the world. One of main functionalities of SGSN node is to forward IP packets according to the destination address in the IP header on IP core network.</p><p>In each new release of SGSN, or when implementation or upgrades have been done on routing application on SGSN, design and test engineers at Ericsson need to emulate the IP core network. This must be done with use of many routers to generate huge amounts of data that can simulate the real world IP core network.</p><p>The major goal of this thesis was to analyze and verifying the use of a suitable and economical solution to emulating IP Core Network of the GPRS system for testing of different functionality of the routing application running in SGSN , instead of building up a physical Core Network with different infrastructure and many routers.</p><p>The method chosen for emulating the IP core network with many routers, and investigated in the thesis, is based on a Cisco simulator called “Dynamips”, which runs many actual Cisco Internetwork Operating Systems (IOS) with many different models of Cisco products in a virtual environment on Windows or Linux platforms. With this simulator, engineers at Ericsson will be able to use this simulator to emulate IP core network easily and efficiently to accomplish system test cases.</p><p>A conclusion of this work is that Dynamips could be used to emulate many complicated IP core network scenarios, with many routers to generate huge amounts of data to simulate the real world IP core network. The emulated system fulfils its purpose for testing of the routing application of SGSN regarding different functionality and characteristics. This is done to ensure and verify that SGSN routing application meets its functional and technical requirements, and also helps to find undiscovered errors as well as helps to ensure that the individual components of routing application on SGSN are working correctly.</p>

This thesis aims to investigate a method and tool for emulation of the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) core network needed as an environment to test the routing functionality. GPRS is the most widely adopted mobile packet data delivery technology in the world. It utilizes an Intranet Protocol (IP)-based core network and involves significant changes to the way the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) air interface is structured. It also forms the basis of the future structure of mobile network transmission and switching. The Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) is the most fundamental node in GPRS. Ericsson produces and manages an increasing number of SGSN nodes in the world. One of main functionalities of SGSN node is to forward IP packets according to the destination address in the IP header on IP core network. In each new release of SGSN, or when implementation or upgrades have been done on routing application on SGSN, design and test engineers at Ericsson need to emulate the IP core network. This must be done with use of many routers to generate huge amounts of data that can simulate the real world IP core network. The major goal of this thesis was to analyze and verifying the use of a suitable and economical solution to emulating IP Core Network of the GPRS system for testing of different functionality of the routing application running in SGSN , instead of building up a physical Core Network with different infrastructure and many routers. The method chosen for emulating the IP core network with many routers, and investigated in the thesis, is based on a Cisco simulator called “Dynamips”, which runs many actual Cisco Internetwork Operating Systems (IOS) with many different models of Cisco products in a virtual environment on Windows or Linux platforms. With this simulator, engineers at Ericsson will be able to use this simulator to emulate IP core network easily and efficiently to accomplish system test cases. A conclusion of this work is that Dynamips could be used to emulate many complicated IP core network scenarios, with many routers to generate huge amounts of data to simulate the real world IP core network. The emulated system fulfils its purpose for testing of the routing application of SGSN regarding different functionality and characteristics. This is done to ensure and verify that SGSN routing application meets its functional and technical requirements, and also helps to find undiscovered errors as well as helps to ensure that the individual components of routing application on SGSN are working correctly.

I dagens samhälle är det inte ovanligt för företag och organisationer att hitta bättre och alternativa mjukvaror med öppen källkod för att lösa sina behov. De söker programvaror som har de nödvändiga egenskaperna som krävs för att driva sin verksamhet och eventuellt ersätta egenutvecklad programvara för att spara tid och undvika onödiga kostnader. Denna avhandling har undersökt företagens behov av routing-applikationer och tagit fram ett förslag med hjälp av egenutvecklad testbädd. Den egenutvecklade testbädden kan användas av företag för att avgöra om den önskade öppen källkod programvara är lönsamt att implementera i ens verksamhet. Den routing-applikation som visade sig vara bättre än den befintliga är FRRouting(Free Range Routing). Lösningen som föreslås av studien har givit bevisad effekt genom ett pilotprojekt där öppen källkod har varit framgångsrikt på ett kvalitetsmässigt, funktionellt och kostnadseffektivt sätt att ersätta en befintlig programvara / Companies are looking into the open source community in the hope of finding a better alternative software to replace their existing software suit. They are looking for software that has the necessary properties required to run their business and possibly help them avoid unnecessary costs and save time. This thesis has examined the needs of routing application for companies and presented a suggestion by using self-developed testbed. The testbed can be used by companies to decide the beneficial of implementing the desired routing application software. The routing application that gave the best result in this study is FRRouting (Free Range Routing). The solution proposed by the study has been proven to be effective through a pilot project where open source program has been successful by retaining the expected quality, functionality in a cost-effective way.