ry stories in the software arena, where we buy upgrades to inferior versions of products simply to maintain our support relationship with a vendor. Fortunately, most telephony equipment upgrades are to genuinely better versions. Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. Mobile Switching Center (MSC) Growth Mobile Switching Center (MSC) Growth grade window, we have the advantage of getting the benefit of the new technology sooner, but we may end up being the beta-test guinea pigs for the upgrade. In the mid- dle of the window, we are buying a more stable product but are delaying the benefits of upgrading to a later time. If we wait until the last minute, then we can rely on the ex- perience of other customers who have purchased the upgrade, and we might be able to find training materials and resources. However, we may end up on a rush deadline to buy the upgrade because our old equipment is fading into obsolescence, and we are de- laying the benefits of the improvement even further. In the case of any upgrade, we must be sure that the upgraded equipment works with every MSC and network component we have and with our network monitoring and management tools. This testing process is ongoing as the MSC and network evolve over time. Two separate upgrades may both be good products, but they may not work with each other. It is important to perform thorough unit and integration tests for each upgrade. We must continue to monitor the MSC for performance, and we must maintain its ability to serve subscriber traffic. This requires making sure that each component in the MSC has enough capacity to do its job and making sure that we properly configure and use the features and capabilities of new equipment and maintain it appropriately. 43.2 Assigning Base Stations to a New MSC At some point along the MSC growth road there will not be enough capacity 