 Moving on, the next functional entity that we will discuss is the access relay functional entity. As the name suggests, it is related to the access side and it is related to the relaying of traffic. Is that traffic the communication or the data or is it the network configuration? Anyways, for either of the two, the access relay functional entity is responsible. We shall see how the access relay functional entity manages the data relay and the IP assignment relay. The access relay functional entity is closely related to the access management functional entity. As you can expect, it is part of the transport stratum which is responsible for determining what relaying mechanism is implemented between the two endpoints that is the network side and the user equipment side. As far as the data relay or the communication relay is concerned, the access relay functional entity interacts or provides a mechanism to implement interaction between the customer equipment and the network attachment and control functional entity. Different relaying mechanisms that is transmit, receive, store, forward, retransmit are implemented here. It all depends upon what access technology is being utilized. For instance, if it is a serial link, then the most commonly known protocol which is used on the IP networks is the point to point protocol. If it is a wire line network, then the access relay functional entity on the user equipment and on the network side is going to be point to point over ethernet and if it is wireless, then it is equivalent that is point to point protocol over wireless is implemented. So it means the choice of the relay technology is dependent upon what hardware or layer two technology is being utilized. As far as the network configuration related relaying activities performed, then IP address assignment relay is a natural responsibility of the access relay. That is when the dynamic host configuration protocol DHCP is used. You know DHCP is used for IP address assignment in a dynamic way in which an IP address is given to a requesting device out of a pool of predefined range of IP addresses. So when DHCP is used, then the IP addresses have to be managed on the network side and these have to be shared on the user equipment side. So it means the access relay functional entity would now be responsible to manage the sharing of IP addresses which are shared or which are basically assigned through the DHCP protocol.