ANDSF Helps Enable an "Always Best Connected" Experience

Posted on April 11, 2014

ANDSF (The Access network discovery and selection function) has been around for a while now—ever since 3GPP Release 8. ANDSF allows a mobile network operator to define policies on how “non-3GPP” networks are accessed. (In reality, non-3GPP means Wi-Fi.) It defines three groups of information that can be sent to a handset: Inter-system mobility policy (ISMP) – This specifies which network type to connect to when only one network connection will be used, for example a choice between LTE and Wi-Fi. Inter-system routing policy (ISRP) – If multiple networks can be used simultaneously, this specifies which type of traffic should use which network. Discovery information (a list of non-3GPP) – This is information about networks that might be available in the handset’s vicinity. ANDSF allows a whole variety of policy conditions to be applied to ISMP, ISRP. and Discovery information such as location, time of day, cell id, current network provider, etc. ANDSF implementations that have integration points into the packet core can also set policy based on subscriber profiles. (More on this later.) To complete this brief description of ANDSF, it’s probably worth mentioning that a handset actually talks to the ANDSF server over the S14 interface using an…