Classes of GPRS services

Classes of GPRS services

Mobile devices can request different types of traffic to be prioritised in an attempt to give the user their desired level of connectivity.

There are 4 types of class:

Precedence Class
An application can be assigned a Precedence Class 1, 2 or 3. If an application has a higher precedence (1) than another (3) then its traffic will be given a higher priority.

Delay Class
Applications can request predictive delay classes which guarantee an average and 95-percentile delay. There are 4 classes, 1 being the fastest.

Reliability class
Applications can request differing levels of reliability for its data depending on its tolerance to data loss.

Throughput Class
Applications can choose different profiles for throughput. There are 2 distinctions in class, peak and mean. Peak throughput class is used mainly for bursty transmissions with a variable in octets per second describing the throughput required for burst of specified size. Mean is the average data transfer rate over a period of time measured in octets per hour.

Other factors can affect QoS. Things like Radio quality, basic LAN / WAN and Internet congestion, faults on GSM and GPRS network’ etc.