Price-based Congestion-Control in Wi-Fi Hot Spots

Wireless networks are now proliferating due to the success of the IEEE 802.11b protocol, also known as "Wi-Fi" (Wireless Fidelity). A Wi-Fi network is characterized by a set of base stations (also called access points) placed throughout the environment and connected to the traditional wired LANs. This technology allows nomadic users a broadband access to the Internet if they are in the transmission range of an access point. A new business model, named Wi-Fi Hot Spots, is now emerging to exploit the potentialities of this technology. A hot spot is a "critical" business area, e.g., airports, stations, hotels, where users can have wireless access by subscribing a contract with the hot spot operator, or with a wireless Internet service provider (WISP). Due to the random access nature of the Wi-Fi technology, if the number of users connected to the same access point increases, the QoS experienced may quickly degrade. This generates complains from the users that, as a consequence, may change their WISP. In order to be competitive, a Wi-Fi hot spot operator needs simple and effective mechanisms to control the congestion therefore guaranteeing the QoS, and (at the same time) maximizing his/her revenues. In this paper we present and evaluate a price-based policy for the access control in a Wi-Fi hot spot. Our policy, named Price-based Congestion Control (PCC), controls the hot spot traffic by dynamically determining the access cost as a function of the current load in the hot spot. We develop a theoretical framework to compute for any load condition the access cost to maintain the hot spot in its optimal operating point, for any load condition. The effectiveness and robustness of the PCC policy has been evaluated by simulating a Wi-Fi hot spot. Both in saturated..

Stochastic Models of TCP Flows over 802 11 WLANs

This technical report develops an analytical framework to model the interaction between TCP and 802:11 MAC protocol over a WLAN, when concurrent TCP downlink and uplink connections are active. Assuming a TCP advertised window equal to one, we formulate a Markov model to characterize the dynamic network contention level, de ned as the expected number of wireless stations having at least a frame to transmit. Exploiting the stochastic characterization of the dynamic contention level induced by the TCP ow control, we develop an accurate model of the MAC protocol behavior to evaluate the TCP throughput performance. Comparison with simulation results validates the model, which provides the analytical basis for the optimization of the system performance. In particular, we prove that using a TCP advertised window equal to one ensures a fair access to the TCP ows of the channel bandwidth, irrespective of the number of TCP downlink or uplink connections. Moreover, we show that the aggregate TCP throughput is almost independent of the number of wireless stations in the network

Multi-layer traffic control for wireless networks

Le reti Wireless LAN, così come definite dallo standard IEEE 802.11, garantiscono connettività senza fili nei cosiddetti “hot-spot” (aeroporti, hotel, etc.), nei campus universitari, nelle intranet aziendali e nelle abitazioni. In tali scenari, le WLAN sono denotate come “ad infrastruttura” nel senso che la copertura della rete è basata sulla presenza di un “Access Point” che fornisce alle stazioni mobili l’accesso alla rete cablata. Esiste un ulteriore approccio (chiamato “ad-hoc”) in cui le stazioni mobili appartenenti alla WLAN comunicano tra di loro senza l’ausilio dell’Access Point. Le Wireless LAN tipicamente sono connesse alla rete di trasporto (che essa sia Internet o una Intranet aziendale) usando un’infrastruttura cablata. Le reti wireless Mesh ad infrastruttura (WIMN) rappresentano un’alternativa valida e meno costosa alla classica infrastruttura cablata. A testimonianza di quanto appena affermato vi è la comparsa e la crescita sul mercato di diverse aziende specializzate nella fornitura di infrastrutture di trasporto wireless e il lancio di varie attività di standardizzazione (tra cui spicca il gruppo 802.11s). La facilità di utilizzo, di messa in opera di una rete wireless e i costi veramente ridotti hanno rappresentato fattori critici per lo straordinario successo di tale tecnologia. Di conseguenza possiamo affermare che la tecnologia wireless ha modificato lo stile di vita degli utenti, il modo di lavorare, il modo di passare il tempo libero (video conferenze, scambio foto, condivisione di brani musicali, giochi in rete, messaggistica istantanea ecc.). D’altro canto, lo sforzo per garantire lo sviluppo di reti capaci di supportare servizi dati ubiqui a velocità di trasferimento elevate è strettamente legato a numerose sfide tecniche tra cui: il supporto per l’handover tra differenti tecnologie (WLAN/3G), la certezza di accesso e autenticazione sicure, la fatturazione e l’accounting unificati, la garanzia di QoS ecc. L’attività di ricerca svolta nell’arco del Dottorato si è focalizzata sulla definizione di meccanismi multi-layer per il controllo del traffico in reti wireless. In particolare, nuove soluzioni di controllo del traffico sono state realizzate a differenti livelli della pila protocollare (dallo strato data-link allo strato applicativo) in modo da fornire: funzionalità avanzate (autenticazione sicura, differenziazione di servizio, handover trasparente) e livelli soddisfacenti di Qualità del Servizio. La maggior parte delle soluzioni proposte in questo lavoro di tesi sono state implementate in test-bed reali. Questo lavoro riporta i risultati della mia attività di ricerca ed è organizzato nel seguente modo: ogni capitolo presenta, ad uno specifico strato della pila protocollare, un meccanismo di controllo del traffico con l’obiettivo di risolvere le problematiche presentate precedentemente. I Capitoli 1 e 2 fanno riferimento allo strato di Trasporto ed investigano il problema del mantenimento della fairness per le connessioni TCP. L’unfairness TCP conduce ad una significativa degradazione delle performance implicando livelli non soddisfacenti di QoS. Questi capitoli descrivono l’attività di ricerca in cui ho impiegato il maggior impegno durante gli studi del dottorato. Nel capitolo 1 viene presentato uno studio simulativo delle problematiche di unfairness TCP e vengono introdotti due possibili soluzioni basate su rate-control. Nel Capitolo 2 viene derivato un modello analitico per la fairness TCP e si propone uno strumento per la personalizzazione delle politiche di fairness. Il capitolo 3 si focalizza sullo strato Applicativo e riporta diverse soluzioni di controllo del traffico in grado di garantire autenticazione sicura in scenari di roaming tra provider wireless. Queste soluzioni rappresentano parte integrante del framework UniWireless, un testbed nazionale sviluppato nell’ambito del progetto TWELVE. Il capitolo 4 descrive, nuovamente a strato Applicativo, una soluzione (basata su SIP) per la gestione della mobilità degli utenti in scenari di rete eterogenei ovvero quando diverse tecnologie di accesso radio sono presenti (802.11/WiFi, Bluetooth, 2.5G/3G). Infine il Capitolo 5 fa riferimento allo strato Data-Link presentando uno studio preliminare di un approccio per il routing e il load-balancing in reti Mesh infrastrutturate.Wireless LANs, as they have been defined by the IEEE 802.11 standard, are shared media enabling connectivity in the so-called “hot-spots” (airports, hotel lounges, etc.), university campuses, enterprise intranets, as well as “in-home” for home internet access. With reference to the above scenarios, WLANs are commonly denoted as “infra-structured” in the sense that WLAN coverage is based on “Access Points” which provide the mobile stations with access to the wired network. In addition to this approach, there exists also an “ad-hoc” mode to organize WLANs where mobile stations talk to each other without the need of Access Points. Wireless LANs are typically connected to the wired backbones (Internet or corporate intranets) using a wired infrastructure. Wireless Infrastructure Mesh Networks (WIMN) may represent a viable and cost-effective alternative to this traditional wired approach. This is witnessed by the emergence and growth of many companies specialized in the provisioning of wireless infrastructure solutions, as well as the launch of standardization activities (such as 802.11s). The easiness of deploying and using a wireless network, and the low deployment costs have been critical factors in the extraordinary success of such technology. As a logical consequence, the wireless technology has allowed end users being connected everywhere – every time and it has changed several things in people’s lifestyle, such as the way people work, or how they live their leisure time (videoconferencing, instant photo or music sharing, network gaming, etc.). On the other side, the effort to develop networks capable of supporting ubiquitous data services with very high data rates in strategic locations is linked with many technical challenges including seamless vertical handovers across WLAN and 3G radio technologies, security, 3G-based authentication, unified accounting and billing, consistent QoS and service provisioning, etc. My PhD research activity have been focused on multi-layer traffic control for Wireless LANs. In particular, specific new traffic control solutions have been designed at different layers of the protocol stack (from the link layer to the application layer) in order to guarantee i) advanced features (secure authentication, service differentiation, seamless handover) and ii) satisfactory level of perceived QoS. Most of the proposed solutions have been also implemented in real testbeds. This dissertation presents the results of my research activity and is organized as follows: each Chapter presents, at a specific layer of the protocol stack, a traffic control mechanism in order to address the introduced above issues. Chapter 1 and Charter 2 refer to the Transport Layer, and they investigate the problem of maintaining fairness for TCP connections. TCP unfairness may result in significant degradation of performance leading to users perceiving unsatisfactory Quality of Service. These Chapters describe the research activity in which I spent the most significant effort. Chapter 1 proposes a simulative study of the TCP fairness issues and two different solutions based on Rate Control mechanism. Chapter 2 illustrates an analytical model of the TCP fairness and derives a framework allowing wireless network providers to customize fairness policies. Chapter 3 focuses on the Application Layer and it presents new traffic control solutions able to guarantee secure authentication in wireless inter-provider roaming scenarios. These solutions are an integral part of the UniWireless framework, a nationwide distributed Open Access testbed that has been jointly realized by different research units within the TWELVE national project. Chapter 4 describes again an Application Layer solution, based on Session Initiation Protocol to manage user mobility and provide seamless mobile multimedia services in a heterogeneous scenario where different radio access technologies are used (802.11/WiFi, Bluetooth, 2.5G/3G networks). Finally Chapter 5 refers to the Data Link Layer and presents a preliminary study of a general approach for routing and load balancing in Wireless Infrastructure Mesh Network. The key idea is to dynamically select routes among a set of slowly changing alternative network paths, where paths are created through the reuse of classical 802.1Q multiple spanning tree mechanisms

THE ANALYSIS OF VARIOUS TCP SUB-VERSIONS AND MECHANISM FOR CONGESTION AVOIDENCE

TCP, the most widely used protocol on Internet, has a major problem in that its congestion control does not allow flows to obtain full bandwidth on fast-long distance links. A Performance analysis of TCP-controlled long file transfers in a WLAN in infrastructure mode also with Comparison and Analysis of Congestion Window for HS-TCP, Full-TCP and TCP-Linux in Long Term Evolution System Model is available in the literature with one of the main assumptions being equal window size for all TCP connections. In this paper, we extend the analysis to TCP-controlled long file uploads and downloads with different TCP windows. Our approach is based on the semiMarkov process considered in [1] and [2], but with arbitrary window sizes. We present simulation results to show the accuracy of the analytical model. KEYWORDS:-WLAN, ACCESS POINTS

Experimenting with commodity 802.11 hardware: overview and future directions

The huge adoption of 802.11 technologies has triggered a vast amount of experimentally-driven research works. These works range from performance analysis to protocol enhancements, including the proposal of novel applications and services. Due to the affordability of the technology, this experimental research is typically based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices, and, given the rate at which 802.11 releases new standards (which are adopted into new, affordable devices), the field is likely to continue to produce results. In this paper, we review and categorise the most prevalent works carried out with 802.11 COTS devices over the past 15 years, to present a timely snapshot of the areas that have attracted the most attention so far, through a taxonomy that distinguishes between performance studies, enhancements, services, and methodology. In this way, we provide a quick overview of the results achieved by the research community that enables prospective authors to identify potential areas of new research, some of which are discussed after the presentation of the survey.This work has been partly supported by the European Community through the CROWD project (FP7-ICT-318115) and by the Madrid Regional Government through the TIGRE5-CM program (S2013/ICE-2919).Publicad

Scalable, Data- intensive Network Computation

To enable groups of collaborating researchers at different locations to effectively share large datasets and investigate their spontaneous hypotheses on the fly, we are interested in de- veloping a distributed system that can be easily leveraged by a variety of data intensive applications. The system is composed of (i) a number of best effort logistical depots to en- able large-scale data sharing and in-network data processing, (ii) a set of end-to-end tools to effectively aggregate, manage and schedule a large number of network computations with attendant data movements, and (iii) a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) on top of the generic depot services for scalable data management. The logistical depot is extended by following the end-to-end principles and is modeled with a closed queuing network model. Its performance characteristics are studied by solving the steady state distributions of the model using local balance equations. The modeling results confirm that the wide area network is the performance bottleneck and running concurrent jobs can increase resource utilization and system throughput. As a novel contribution, techniques to effectively support resource demanding data- intensive applications using the ¯ne-grained depot services are developed. These techniques include instruction level scheduling of operations, dynamic co-scheduling of computation and replication, and adaptive workload control. Experiments in volume visualization have proved the effectiveness of these techniques. Due to the unique characteristic of data- intensive applications and our co-scheduling algorithm, a DHT is implemented on top of the basic storage and computation services. It demonstrates the potential of the Logistical Networking infrastructure to serve as a service creation platform

Enabling location-aware quality-controlled access in wireless networks

Location-based services (LBSs), such as location-specific contents-providing services, presence services, and E-911 locating services, have recently been drawing much attention in wireless network community. Since LBSs rely on the location information in providing services and enhancing their service quality, we need to devise a framework of directly using the location information to provide a different level of service differentiation and/or fairness for them. In this paper, we investigate how to use location information for QoS provisioning in IEEE 802.11-based Hot Spot networks. Location-based service differentiation is different from existing QoS schemes in that it assigns different priority levels to different locations rather than flows or stations and schedules network resources to support the prioritized service levels. In order to realize such the location-based service differentiation, we introduce the concept of per-location target load to simply represent the desirable rate of traffic imposed to the network, which is dynamically changing due to the number of stations. The load consists of per-location load, which directly quantifies per-location usage of link capacity, and network-wide load, which indirectly calibrates the portion of per-location load contributed to the network-wide traffic. We then propose a feedback framework of provisioning service differentiation and/or fairness according to per-location target load. In the proposed framework, the load information is feedback to traffic senders and used to adjust their sending rate, so that per-location load does not deviate from a given per-location share of wireless link capacity and lays only tolerable traffic on the network in cooperation with other locations. We finally implemented the proposed framework in ns-2 simulator and conducted an extensive set of simulation study so as to evaluate its performance and effectiveness. The simulation results indicate that the proposed framework provides location-based service differentiation and/or fairness in IEEE 802.11 Hot Spot networks, regardless of the number of stations in a location, traffic types, or station mobility. © 2011, Kim et al; licensee Springer.1