Qos in LTE (4G) – ARP

ARP in LTE is not the Ethernet standard for address resolution, but rather the Allocation and Retention Policy.

A scenario may arise where on a congested cell another bearer is requested to be setup.

The P-GW, S-GW or eNB have to make a decision to either drop an existing bearer, or to refuse the request to setup a new bearer.

The ARP value is used to determine the priority of the bearer to be established compared to others,

For example a call to an emergency services number on a congested cell should drop any other bearers so the call can be made, thus the request for bearer for the VoLTE call would have a higher ARP value than the other bearers and the P-GW, S-GW or eNB would drop an existing bearer with a lower ARP value to accommodate the new bearer with a higher ARP value.

ARP is only used when setting up a new bearer, not to determine how much priority is given to that bearer once it’s established (that’s defined by the QCI).