Despite the growing number of mobile devices equipped with multiple
networking interfaces, they are not using multiple available networks in
parallel. The simple network selection techniques only allow for single
network to be used at a time and switching between different networks
interrupts all existing connections. This work presents system that
improves network connectivity in presence of multiple network adapters, not
only through better network handovers, smarter network selection and failure
detection, but also through increased bandwidth offered to the device over
aggregated channels.
The biggest challenge such a system has to face is the heterogeneity of
networks in mobile environment. Different wireless technologies, and even
different networks of the same type offer inconsistent link parameters like
available bandwidth, latency or packet loss. The wireless nature of these
networks also means, that most of the parameters fluctuate in unpredictable
way. Given the intended practicality of designed system, all that
complexity has to be hidden from both client-side applications and from the
remote servers. These factors combined make the task of designing and
implementing an efficient solution difficult.
The system incorporates client-side software, as well as network proxy that
assists in splitting data traffic, tunnelling it over a number of available
network interfaces, and reassembling it on the remote side. These
operations are transparent to both applications running on the client, as
well as any network servers those applications communicate with. This
property allows the system to meet one of the most important requirements,
which is the practicality of the solution, and being able to deploy it in
real life scenarios, using network protocols available today and on existing
devices. This work also studies the most critical cost associated with
increased data processing and parallel interface usage - the increase in
energy usage, which needs to remain within reasonable values for this kind
of solution being usable on mobile devices with limited battery life.
The properties of designed and deployed system are evaluated using multiple
experiments in different scenarios. Collected results confirm that our
approach can provide applications with increased bandwidth when multiple
networks are available. We also discover that even though per-second energy
usage increases when multiple interfaces are used in parallel, the use of
multi-interface connectivity can actually reduce the total energy cost
associated with performing specific tasks - effectively saving energy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:OWTU.10012/7013 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Schmidtke, Jakub Krzysztof |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
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