cell Phones and Digital networking.

[Jeff Gostin]

lefty at 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. :-)

                                        --jeff
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