e same QoS level. Therefore, it brings a more efficient utilization of the transport resources in the UTRAN transport network. By investigating different MDCR settings, it is concluded that MDCR should be chosen as a compromise of the system performance and the lub link utilization, and also dependent on the QoS target defined by the network operator. Appendix A.16 (V) compares different traffic separation configurations, i.e. 2 VPs or 3 VPs, to transmit HSDPA, HSUPA and Re199 traffic within the same transport network. The traffic separation approaches are developed by the author in this thesis together with colleagues in the MATURE and HSPA project (see section 5.7). The presented simulation results demonstrate that both 2 VPs and 3 VPs configurations can be applied as the traffic separation solutions for the transport of HSPA and Rel99 traffic in the same radio access network. Through comparing the network and user performances of the two traffic separation configurations, using 3 VPs is slightly better than the 2 VPs due to a better protection for the signaling traffic but at the expenses of paying for one additional VP. 6.5 Dimensioning for HSPA Therefore by taking considerations of both QoS and network costs, both 2 and 3 VPs solutions can be considered for the network operators or service providers to plan a UMTS access network to separately transport Rel99 and HSPA traffic. All these results have been presented in [LSGT08, LZW*09]. The traffic separation approach is a generic approach for transmitting different services (each with different QoS constrains) over different paths in the transport network. As another example, it can be also applied in a Carrier Ethernet-based UTRAN (using Pseudo-Wire Emulation (PWE) to emulate the ATM service over Ethernet in the transport network): a UBR or UBR+ path can be used for transmitting the best effort data service while the delay sensitive real time service like voice telephony is transmitted over a CBR path. 7 Dimensioning for Single IP-Based Iub After studying the