Data offloading is the systematic transfer of data traffic from a cellular network to a complementary network such as Wi-Fi with the aim of reducing congestion on mobile networks and providing high speed connectivity for the users. Given the increasing heterogeneity of network traffic and constantly changing network conditions, one key challenge that operators face with data offloading mechanisms in traditional network architectures is static authentication and offloading policies. This inadvertently leads to high latency and jitters and in some cases session discontinuity during offloading. Moreover, most of the offloading decisions are initiated by the users. Software Defined Networking (SDN) leverages on the control and data plane separation technique to offer a more dynamic approach to networking through programmable control functions in IP networks. In this work, we implement a proof-of-concept prototype of a provider-assisted Wi-Fi offloading leveraging on SDN. We investigate the improvement in latency and throughput that a cellular operator can achieve in the access network by using SDN to dynamically offload mobile user traffic to a Wi-Fi network.
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