lefty@apple.com (Lefty) writes:
Forgive my ignorance, since I've always viewed cellular phones as being overpriced toys, but if the cellular network _didn't_ track the location of a given phone how could it route incoming calls to it? Bingo. :-) It has to know the proper ESN to send the signal to. The ESN is an Electronic Serial Number, and every Cell Phone has a unique one. Your cellphone number is attached to the ESN.
Some friends who were visiting from New Mexico this weekend told me they had to inform their service provider of where they were going to be so they could receive calls on their cellular phone. Well, I don't know about the need to let them know. I do know that you can generally "log in" and "log out" of zones as you pass through them, allowing the system to track you as you trek across the country.
We've played with wireless mobile networking around here, and routers need to keep track of individual nodes as they move around. Are cellular phones different? Am I missing something here? This is where I get a little shady on my knowledge. If you substitute routers for signal centers, and individual nodes for ESNs, you have the general idea. :-)
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