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A First Look at Cellular Network Latency in China

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Communications and Networking (ChinaCom 2016)

Abstract

The cellular networks in China are growing rapidly, thus various radio complex technologies, from 2G to 4G are deployed to support billions of mobile users. In this paper, we take a first attempt to analyze cellular network latency in China. A mobile app NetSense (The application is available at: https://github.com/lovesick/NetSense/) was scattered up on several hundred mobile terminals to measure the latency at large. Based on the measured results of 4 months, we find out that: (i) China’s cellular network adopts hierarchical structure, with more gateways deployed in capital or major cities for each province; (ii) the latency varies largely across geographical locations, ISPs and is also dependent on the deployed cellular technologies; (iii) Considering end-to-end latency, the last mile delay contributes over 70 percentage for the whole transmission latency.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant 61402065, Chongqing key science and technology project (No. cstc2014jcsf70001) and Young Backbone Teacher Funding Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission.

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Correspondence to Xinheng Wang .

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© 2018 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Wang, X., Xu, C., Jin, W., Zhao, G. (2018). A First Look at Cellular Network Latency in China. In: Chen, Q., Meng, W., Zhao, L. (eds) Communications and Networking. ChinaCom 2016. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 209. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66625-9_33

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66625-9_33

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-66624-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-66625-9

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