Accurate and Efficient Measurements of IP level Performance to Drive Interface Selection in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

摘要

Optimal interface selection is a key mobility management issue inheterogeneous wireless networks. Measuring the physical or link levelperformance on a given wireless access networks does not provide a reliableindication of the IP connectivity, delay and loss on the (bidirectional) pathsfrom the Mobile Host to the node that is handling the mobility, over differentheterogeneous networks. In this paper, we propose, implement and analyzemechanisms for connectivity check and performance (network delay and packetloss) monitoring over IP access networks. We evaluate the accuracy andtimeliness of the performance estimates and provide guidelines for tuning upthe parameters. From the implementation perspective, we show that usingapplication level measurements is highly CPU intensive, while a kernel basedimplementation has comparably a very low CPU usage. The Linux kernelimplementation results in an efficient use of batteries in Mobile Hosts andintermediate Mobility Management Nodes can scale up to monitoring thousands offlows. The proposed solutions have been implemented in the context of aspecific mobility management solution, but the results are of generalapplicability. The Linux implementation is available as Open Source.