the bold circle is used as the serving base station i e the base station terminating the core network interfaces data stream and performing radio resource management rrm functions like scheduling power control and the like in contrast thereto the other shaded base station d is used as a drift base station providing only resources and radio l 1 layer functions for the respective connections to the mobile terminal m in the ran topology shown in fig1 contrary to conventional rans most of the functions of a former centralized controller e g rnc or bsc are moved to the base stations in particular all radio interface protocols are terminated in the base stations entities outside the base stations are needed to perform common configuration and some radio resource functions or interworking with legacy gateways to a core network etc an interface is needed between the base stations supporting both control plane signaling and user plane traffic full connectivity among the entities may be supported over an ipv6 internet protocol version 6 transport network furthermore a ran gateway rngw not shown may be provided which is the ip user plane access point from the ip based core network or other ran to the present ran during a radio access bearer assignment procedure the ran returns to the core network transport addresses owned by the rngw where the user plane shall be terminated additionally packet switched and circuit switched interfaces are connected through the rngw in the situation shown in fig1 one network node has to be selected as the mdc point for the connections to the mobile terminal m e.