On 9/2/2012 17:28, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> The same identical, save in electronic form,
> technology is at the center of cell tower systems.

Well, no, not really.

That said, yeah, there's basically a modem in the phone that takes the 
digital signal from your internet stack and sends it over analog radio 
signals to the cell tower. All the stuff handling roaming and IP address 
assignment and all that is handled at the layer below the IP layer, which 
the internet doesn't even try to address, which is why you don't see things 
like roaming wifi connections.

> Since the networks
> work almost exactly the same though, in terms of digital packets, its
> trivial to translate your "internet" address to a "cell" address, and pass
> the messages to the right locations.

I would phrase it more that IP is designed to be capable of being carried 
over pretty much any network, and the various cell protocols are various 
types of networks, so it's a straight forward mapping.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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