Load-Aware Traffic Control in Software-Defined Enterprise Wireless Local Area Networks

With the growing popularity of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), modern enterprise Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) deployments always consist of multiple Access Points (APs) to meet the fast-increasing demand for wireless access. In order to avoid network congestion which leads to issues such as suboptimal Quality of Service (QoS) and degraded user Quality of Experience (QoE), intelligent network traffic control is needed. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging architecture and intensively discussed as one of the most promising technologies to simplify network management and service development. In the SDN architecture, network management is directly programmable because it is decoupled from forwarding layer. Leveraging SDN to the existing enterprise WLANs framework, network services can be flexibly implemented to support intelligent network traffic control. This thesis studies the architecture of software-defined enterprise WLANs and how to improve network traffic control from a client-side and an AP-side perspective. By extending an existing software-defined enterprise WLANs framework, two adaptive algorithms are proposed to provide client-based mobility management and load balancing. Custom protocol messages and AP load metric are introduced to enable the proposed adaptive algorithms. Moreover, a software-defined enterprise WLAN system is designed and implemented on a testbed. A load-aware automatic channel switching algorithm and a QoS-aware bandwidth control algorithm are proposed to achieve AP-based network traffic control. Experimental results from the testbed show that the designed system and algorithms significantly improve the performance of traffic control in enterprise WLANs in terms of network throughput, packet loss rate, transmission delay and jitter

Toward Open and Programmable Wireless Network Edge

Increasingly, the last hop connecting users to their enterprise and home networks is wireless. Wireless is becoming ubiquitous not only in homes and enterprises but in public venues such as coffee shops, hospitals, and airports. However, most of the publicly and privately available wireless networks are proprietary and closed in operation. Also, there is little effort from industries to move forward on a path to greater openness for the requirement of innovation. Therefore, we believe it is the domain of university researchers to enable innovation through openness. In this thesis work, we introduce and defines the importance of open framework in addressing the complexity of the wireless network. The Software Defined Network (SDN) framework has emerged as a popular solution for the data center network. However, the promise of the SDN framework is to make the network open, flexible and programmable. In order to deliver on the promise, SDN must work for all users and across all networks, both wired and wireless. Therefore, we proposed to create new modules and APIs to extend the standard SDN framework all the way to the end-devices (i.e., mobile devices, APs). Thus, we want to provide an extensible and programmable abstraction of the wireless network as part of the current SDN-based solution. In this thesis work, we design and develop a framework, weSDN (wireless extension of SDN), that extends the SDN control capability all the way to the end devices to support client-network interaction capabilities and new services. weSDN enables the control-plane of wireless networks to be extended to mobile devices and allows for top-level decisions to be made from an SDN controller with knowledge of the network as a whole, rather than device centric configurations. In addition, weSDN easily obtains user application information, as well as the ability to monitor and control application flows dynamically. Based on the weSDN framework, we demonstrate new services such as application-aware traffic management, WLAN virtualization, and security management

Will SDN be part of 5G?

For many, this is no longer a valid question and the case is considered settled with SDN/NFV (Software Defined Networking/Network Function Virtualization) providing the inevitable innovation enablers solving many outstanding management issues regarding 5G. However, given the monumental task of softwarization of radio access network (RAN) while 5G is just around the corner and some companies have started unveiling their 5G equipment already, the concern is very realistic that we may only see some point solutions involving SDN technology instead of a fully SDN-enabled RAN. This survey paper identifies all important obstacles in the way and looks at the state of the art of the relevant solutions. This survey is different from the previous surveys on SDN-based RAN as it focuses on the salient problems and discusses solutions proposed within and outside SDN literature. Our main focus is on fronthaul, backward compatibility, supposedly disruptive nature of SDN deployment, business cases and monetization of SDN related upgrades, latency of general purpose processors (GPP), and additional security vulnerabilities, softwarization brings along to the RAN. We have also provided a summary of the architectural developments in SDN-based RAN landscape as not all work can be covered under the focused issues. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on the state of the art of SDN-based RAN and clearly points out the gaps in the technology.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure

Bringing cross-layer MIMO to today's wireless LANs

Recent years have seen major innovations in cross-layer wireless designs. Despite demonstrating significant throughput gains, hardly any of these technologies have made it into real networks. Deploying cross-layer innovations requires adoption from Wi-Fi chip manufacturers. Yet, manufacturers hesitate to undertake major investments without a better understanding of how these designs interact with real networks and applications. This paper presents the first step towards breaking this stalemate, by enabling the adoption of cross-layer designs in today's networks with commodity Wi-Fi cards and actual applications. We present OpenRF, a cross-layer architecture for managing MIMO signal processing. OpenRF enables access points on the same channel to cancel their interference at each other's clients, while beamforming their signal to their own clients. OpenRF is self-configuring, so that network administrators need not understand MIMO or physical layer techniques. We patch the iwlwifi driver to support OpenRF on off-the-shelf Intel cards. We deploy OpenRF on a 20-node network, showing how it manages the complex interaction of cross-layer design with a real network stack, TCP, bursty traffic, and real applications. Our results demonstrate an average gain of 1.6x for TCP traffic and a significant reduction in response time for real-time applications, like remote desktop.National Science Foundation (U.S.

Programming Abstractions for Software–Defined Wireless Networks

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has received, in the last years, significant interest from the academic and the industrial communities alike. The decoupled control and data planes found in an SDN allows for logically centralized intelligence in the control plane and generalized network hardware in the data plane. Although the current SDN ecosystem provides a rich support for wired packet-switched networks, the same cannot be said for wireless networks where specific radio data-plane abstractions, controllers, and programming primitives are still yet to be established. In this work, we present a set of programming abstractions modeling the fundamental aspects of a wireless network, namely state management, resource provisioning, network monitoring, and network reconfiguration. The proposed abstractions hide away the implementation details of the underlying wireless technology providing programmers with expressive tools to control the state of the network. We also present a Software-Defined Radio Access Network Controller for Enterprise WLANs and a Python--based Software Development Kit implementing the proposed abstractions. Finally, we experimentally evaluate the usefulness, efficiency and flexibility of the platform over a real 802.11-based WLAN

Software defined wireless sensor networks application opportunities for efficient network management : a survey

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are commonly used information technologies of modern networking and computing platforms. Today's network computing applications are faced with a high demand of powerful network functionalities. Functional network reach is central to customer satisfaction such as in mobile networks and cloud computing environments. However, efficient management of WSNs remains a challenge, due to problems supplemental to them. Recent technology shift proposes Software Defined Networking (SDN) for improving computing networks. This review paper highlights application challenges faced by WSNs for monitored environments and those faced by the proposed approaches, as well as opportunities that can be realized on applications of WSNs using SDN. We also highlight Implementation considerations by focusing on critical aspects that should not be disregarded when attempting to improve network functionalities. We then propose a strategy for Software Defined Wireless Sensor Network (SDWSN) as an effort for application improvement in monitored environments.The National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa (grant number: RDYR160404161474 and IFR160118156967).http://www.elsevier.com/locate/compeleceng2019-02-01hj2018Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

A study into scalable transport networks for IoT deployment

The growth of the internet towards the Internet of Things (IoT) has impacted the way we live. Intelligent (smart) devices which can act autonomously has resulted in new applications for example industrial automation, smart healthcare systems, autonomous transportation to name just a few. These applications have dramatically improved the way we live as citizens. While the internet is continuing to grow at an unprecedented rate, this has also been coupled with the growing demands for new services e.g. machine-to machine (M2M) communications, smart metering etc. Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) architecture was developed decades ago and was not prepared nor designed to meet these exponential demands. This has led to the complexity of the internet coupled with its inflexible and a rigid state. The challenges of reliability, scalability, interoperability, inflexibility and vendor lock-in amongst the many challenges still remain a concern over the existing (traditional) networks. In this study, an evolutionary approach into implementing a "Scalable IoT Data Transmission Network" (S-IoT-N) is proposed while leveraging on existing transport networks. Most Importantly, the proposed evolutionary approach attempts to address the above challenges by using open (existing) standards and by leveraging on the (traditional/existing) transport networks. The Proof-of-Concept (PoC) of the proposed S-IoT-N is attempted on a physical network testbed and is demonstrated along with basic network connectivity services over it. Finally, the results are validated by an experimental performance evaluation of the PoC physical network testbed along with the recommendations for improvement and future work