Heterogeneity-Aware Load Balancing for Multimedia Access over Wireless LAN Hotspots

Authors: Yen-Cheng Chen, Gong-Da Fang

Abstract:

Wireless LAN (WLAN) access in public hotspot areas becomes popular in the recent years. Since more and more multimedia information is available in the Internet, there is an increasing demand for accessing multimedia information through WLAN hotspots. Currently, the bandwidth offered by an IEEE 802.11 WLAN cannot afford many simultaneous real-time video accesses. A possible way to increase the offered bandwidth in a hotspot is the use of multiple access points (APs). However, a mobile station is usually connected to the WLAN AP with the strongest received signal strength indicator (RSSI). The total consumed bandwidth cannot be fairly allocated among those APs. In this paper, we will propose an effective load-balancing scheme via the support of the IAPP and SNMP in APs. The proposed scheme is an open solution and doesn-t need any changes in both wireless stations and APs. This makes load balancing possible in WLAN hotspots, where a variety of heterogeneous mobile devices are employed.

Keywords: Wireless LAN, Load balancing, IAPP, SNMP.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1055174

References:

[1] IEEE 802.11 WG, "IEEE 802.11 Standard for Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications," IEEE Standard, 1999.
[2] Y. Moritani, Y. Atsumi, "Efficient Bandwidth Utilization through Multicast Receiver Aggregation in wireless LAN spot," The 11th IEEE International Conference on ICON2003, pp. 579-584, 28 September -1 October 2003.
[3] IEEE 802.11 WG, "802.11F IEEE Trial-Use Recommended Practice for Multi-Vendor Access Point Interoperability via an Inter-Access Point Protocol Across Distribution Systems Supporting IEEE 802.11 Operation," IEEE Standard, 14 July 2003.
[4] J. D. Case, M. Fedor, M. Schoffstall, C. Davin, "Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)," RFC 1098. April 1989.
[5] A. Balachandran, P. Bahl, and G. M. Voelker, "Hot-Spot Congestion Relief in Public-area Wireless Networks," In Proc. Fourth IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, pp. 70-80, June 2002.
[6] I. Papanikos and M. Logothetis, "A study on dynamic load balance for IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN," In Proc. COMCON, 2001.
[7] L. Nuaymi, J. El-Sayah, "Access Point Association in IEEE 802.11 WLAN," In Proc. Information and Communication Technologies: From Theory to Applications (ICTTA), April 2004.
[8] Y. Bejerano , S. J. Han , L. (Erran) Li, "Fairness and load balancing in wireless LANs using association control," In Proc. the 10th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking, September 26-October 01, 2004, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
[9] H. Velayos, V. Aleo and G. Karlsson, "Load balancing in overlapping wireless LAN cells," In Proc. IEEE ICC 2004, Paris, France, June 2004.
[10] L.-H. Yen and T.-T. Yeh, "SNMP-Based Approach to Load Distribution in IEEE 802.11 Networks," Proc. Vehicular Tech. Conf., vol. 3 (VTC2006-Spring), IEEE Press, 2006, pp. 1196-1200.
[11] Li-Hsing Yen, Tse-Tsung Yeh, and Kuang-Hui Chi, "Load balancing in IEEE 802.11 networks," IEEE Internet Computing, Vol. 13, pp. 30-38, Jan-Feb, 2009.
[12] Y. Fukuda and Y. Oie, "Decentralized 1. Access Point Selection Architecture for Wireless LANs: Deployability and Robustness," Proc. Vehicular Tech. Conf., vol. 2 (VTC2004-Fall), IEEE Press, 2004, pp. 1103-1107.
[13] IEEE 802.11 WG, "Draft Supplement to Part 11: Wireless Medium Access Control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specifications: Medium Access Control (MAC) Enhancements for Quality of Service (QoS)", IEEE 802.11e/D13.0, Jan. 2005.
[14] M.T. Lee, L.-T. Lai, and D. Lai, "Enhanced Algorithm for Initial AP Selection and Roaming," US patent 0039817, Patent and Trademark Office, Feb. 2004.
[15] O. Brickley, S. Rea, and D. Pesch, "Load Balancing for QoS Enhancement in IEEE 802.11e WLANs Using Cell Breathing Techniques," Proc. IFIP Mobile and Wireless Communication Networks Conf., Int-l Federation for Information Processing, 2005.
[16] S. Vasudevan et al., "Facilitating Access Point Selection in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks," Proc. Internet Measurement Conf., Usenix Assoc., 2005, pp. 293-298.
[17] K. McCloghrie and M. Rose, "Management Information Base for Network Management of TCP/IP-based internets: MIB-II," RFC1213, March 1991.
[18] E. Decker, P. Langille, A. Rijsinghani, K. McCloghrie, "Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges," RFC 1493, July 1993.
[19] AdventNet Java SNMP API, http://snmp.adventnet.com/
[20] Windows Media Services Help Document, Microsoft Corporation, 2005.
[21] D. M. Chiu and R. Jain, "Analysis of the Increase and Decrease Algorithms for Congestion Avoidance in Computer Networks," Journal of Computer Networks and ISDN, vol. 17, June 1989.
[15] V. Aleo, "Load distribution in IEEE 802.11 cells", Master of Science Thesis, KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, March 2003.
[22] J. Yeo, M. Youssef, and A. Agrawala, "A Framework for Wireless LAN Monitoring and Its Applications," In Proc. the 2004 ACM workshop on Wireless security, October 2004.
[23] A. Mishra, M. Shin, and W. Arbaugh, "An Empirical Analysis of the IEEE 802.11 MAC Layer Handoff Process," ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, vol.33, no. 2, pp. 93-120, April 2003.
[24] Wireshark, http://www.wireshark.org/.
[25] A. Mishra, M. Shin, and W. Arbaugh, "Context Caching Using Neighbor Graphs for Fast Handoffs in a Wireless Network," In Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, March 2004.
[26] C. T. Chou and K. G. Shin, "An Enhanced Inter-Access Point Protocol for Uniform Intra and Intersubnet Handoffs," IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 04, no. 4, pp. 321-334, July/August, 2005.
[27] I. Samprakou, C. J. Bouras, and T. Karoubalis, "Fast and Efficient IP Handover in IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs," 2004 International Conference on Wireless Networks (ICWN- 04), Las Vegas, Nevada, USE, June 2004.
[28] I. Samprakou, C. J. Bouras, and T. Karoubalis, "Improvements on "IP-IAPP": A fast IP Handoff Protocol for IEEE 802.11 wireless & mobile clients," WINET Journal, 2006.