Patent ID: 6920116

Claim:
A method in a General Packet Radio Service(GPRS) network of automatically configuring Network Service Entity Identifiers (NSEIs) in a Base Station System (BSS) and a Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) when the BSS is reconfigured, said method comprising the steps of: modifying a Gb interface between the BSS and the SGSN to operate using the Internet Protocol (IP) in order to transmit data packets between functional entities in the BSS and the SGSN over a connectionless IP network; configuring the BSS and the SGSN to run on the IP protocol by implementing a protocol stack in the BSS and the SGSN that includes a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) layer over an IP layer; implementing a Base Station System GPRS Protocol (BSSGP) protocol layer between the BSS and the SGSN; implementing a modified Network Services (NS′) layer that maps the BSSGP layer to the UDP and IP layers and provides access to the connectionless IP network; automatically sending a request for an NSEI from the BSS to the SGSN whenever a new Network Service Entity (NSE) is added to an existing BSS and whenever a new BSS is added to the network; allocating a free NSEI by the SGSN; sending the allocated NSEI from the SGSN to the BSS; and recording the allocated NSEI in the BSS and the SGSN.