Difference between Mobile IP and GSM

Before moving onto the commonalities between GSM and Mobile IP, let’s go through brief discussion about these.

1. Mobile IP:
Mobile IP is an extension of IP protocol. It allows laptops(or smartphones) to be connected to the internet.

Services of Mobile IP:

• Support for many different modes of operations.
• Multiple ways for agents and mobile nods to discover each other.
• Use of single or multiple COAs.
• Multiple forms of encapsulation.

Working Procedure:

• Agent Discovery: It advertises the protocols of home or foreign agents to use its services to mobile-nodes.
• Registration with Home Agent: It defines protocols used by mobile-nodes to register COAs with home agent.
• Indirect routing of datagrams: It defines the manner in which datagrams are being transferred to mobile-node from home agent.

2. GSM:
GSM stands for Global System for Mobile communication.
It is widely used mobile communication system in the world. It uses time division multiple access(TDMA) to send down the digitized and reduced data through a channel with two different streams of client data, each in its own particular time slot.

The main difference between both is:
GSM is the radio network you use to access data.
Mobile IP is used to transport your IP data from your device to a centralized exit point where it enters the public internet.

Difference between Mobile IP and GSM:

GSM element	Comment on GSM element	Mobile IP element
Home System	Network to which the mobile user’s permanent phone number belongs.	Home network
Gateway mobile switching center or simply home MSC, Home location register (HLR).	Home MSC: point of contact to obtain routable address of mobile user. HLR: database in home system containing permanent phone number, profile information, current location of mobile user, subscription information.	Home agent
Visited System	Network other than home system where mobile user is currently residing.	Visited network
Visited mobile services switching center, Visitor location register (VLR)	Visited MSC: responsible for setting up calls to/from mobile nodes in cells associated with MSC. VLR: temporary database entry in visited system, containing subscription information for each visited mobile user.	Foreign agent
Mobile station roaming number (MSRN) or simply roaming number	Routable address for telephone cell segment between home MSC and visited MSC, visible to neither the mobile nor the correspondent.	Care-of-address