Brent Cook

The last time I posted to the blog we were talking about questions surrounding IPv6 deployment. You might remember from that post that I am a software architect at BreakingPoint Systems, specializing in design and performance for the network processors in our products. Today I get to continue our "LTE Diaries" series where we have outlined our plans for LTE support and the speed at which we are able to make this happen thanks to the network processor-based architecture. If you haven't read the previous posts I would encourage you to read up on our overall LTE development, the S1AP implementation and our SCTP support. Today we will tackle the GPRS Tunneling Protocol, or GTP. GTP is a layer-4 protocol used for a number of different back-haul tasks in a 3GPP/LTE environment. It comes in two flavors, GTP-C (control plane) and GTP-U (for user data). I have had the opportunity to implement parts of both GTP-C and GTP-U for BreakingPoint's upcoming LTE support, and would like to share some development notes.