[puk]

Hi. I had a question about blackberry network architecture that I've been unable to dig up a clear answer to. In short: for older and newer blackberries, did data go to/from the blackberry device over the carrier's TCP/IP network and/or the internet, or was there some other network on top of EDGE (or whatever other system they were using)?

Note that I'm not asking if you could access the internet from the device, or if the TCP/IP stack was exposed to other applications. I just want to know if the device had an IP address and the blackberry-specific data traveled over the internet to the device, or if it was some other data channel.

It might be worth breaking it down even more:
1) Did/do blackberries have an internet-addressable IP address?
2) Did/does blackberry-specific data get from the carrier to the device over TCP/IP?
3) Did/does blackberry-specific data get from the blackberry service provider to the carrier over the internet?

Thanks for any help. If I've been vague or my question doesn't make sense in the context of blackberry's architecture, just let me know. Thanks!

-puk