In recent times, wireless Local Area Networks (wireless LANs) based on the IEEE 802.11 standard have been spreading rapidly, and connecting to the Internet using wireless LANs has become more common. In addition, public wireless LAN service areas, such as train stations, hotels, and airports, are increasing and tethering technology has enabled smartphones to act as access points (APs). Consequently, there can be multiple APs in the same area. In this situation, users must select one of many APs. Various studies have proposed and evaluated many AP selection methods; however, existing methods do not consider AP mobility. In this paper, we propose an AP selection method based on cooperation among APs and user movement. Moreover, we demonstrate that the proposed method dramatically improves throughput compared to an existing method.

The advent of various quality-sensitive applications has greatly changed the requirements for IP network management and made the monitoring of individual traffic flows more important. Since the processing costs of per-flow quality monitoring are high, especially in high-speed backbone links, packet sampling techniques have been attracting considerable attention. Existing sampling techniques, such as those used in Sampled NetFlow and sFlow, however, focus on the monitoring of traffic volume, and there has been little discussion of the monitoring of such quality indexes as packet loss ratio. In this paper we propose a method for estimating, from sampled packets, packet loss ratios in individual TCP sessions. It detects packet loss events by monitoring duplicate ACK events raised by each TCP receiver. Because sampling reveals only a portion of the actual packet loss, the actual packet loss ratio is estimated statistically. Simulation results show that the proposed method can estimate the TCP packet loss ratio accurately from a 10% sampling of packets.

Overlay networks are expected to be a promising technology for the realization of QoS (Quality of Service) control. Overlay networks have recently attracted considerable attention due to the following advantages: a new service can be developed in a short duration and it can be started with a low cost. The definition and necessity of the overlay network is described, and the classification of various current and future overlay networks, particularly according to the QoS feature, is attempted. In order to realize QoS control, it is considered that routing overlay and session overlay are promising solutions. In particular, session and overlay networks are explained in detail since new TCP protocols for QoS instead of current TCP protocols that control congestion in the Internet can be used within overlay networks. However, many open issues such as scalability still need further research and development although overlay networks have many attractive features and possess the potential to become a platform for the deployment of new services.

We propose an optimal access-point (AP) selection algorithm for maximizing the aggregated throughput of each AP (system throughput) while preserving newly arrived-user throughput in multi rate WLAN system. In our algorithm, newly arrived users cooperate with a wireless local area network (WLAN) system they are trying to use, i.e., they are willing to move toward an appropriate AP before the newly arrived user connects to AP. To select the AP by using our AP selection algorithm, the newly arriving users request two novel parameter values, “the minimum acceptable throughput” with which newly arrived users can be satisfied and “the minimum movable distance” in which a user can move to an appropriate AP. While preserving these conditions, we maximize system throughput. When users cannot obtain a throughput greater than “the minimum acceptable throughput” with our proposed AP selection algorithm, they are rejected. Because, if users use streaming applications, which have strict bandwidth demands, with a very low bit-rate connection, they will not be satisfied. Thus, the newly arrived users having low bit-rate connection may be allowed to be rejected before the newly arrived user connects. In this paper, we show the optimal AP by using theoretical proof. We discuss the effectiveness of our proposed AP selection algorithm by using numerical analysis. We also clarify and analyze the characteristics of system throughput. Moreover, we show that a newly arrived user can select the movable distance and acceptable throughput by using examples from graphs depicting every position of newly arrived users. By using the graphs, we also show the relationship between the two parameters (the movable distance and the acceptable throughput) and the optimal AP, and the relationship between the two parameters and optimal system throughput when the movable distance and acceptable throughput are variable.

The market growths of smart-phones and thin clients have been significantly increasing communication traffic in mobile networks. To handle the increased traffic, network operators should consider how to leverage distributed wireless resources such as distributed spots of wireless local access networks. In this paper, we consider the system where multiple moving users share distributed wireless access points on their traveling routes between their start and goal points and formulate as an optimization problem. Then, we come up with three algorithms as a solution for the problem. The key idea here is 'longcut route instruction', in which users are instructed to choose a traveling route where less congested access points are available; even if the moving distance increases, the throughput for users in the system would improve. In this paper, we define the gain function. Moreover, we analyze the basic characteristics of the system using as a simple model as possible.

Because of the development of recent broadband access technologies, fair service among users is becoming more important goal. The most promising router mechanisms for providing fair service is per-flow traffic management. However, it is difficult to implement in high-speed core routers because per-flow state management is prohibitively expensive; thus, a large number of flows are aggregated into a small number of queues. This is not an acceptable situation because fairness degrades as the number of flows so aggregated increases. In this paper, we propose a new traffic management scheme called Hierarchically Aggregated Fair Queueing (HAFQ) to provide per-flow fair service. Our scheme can adjust flow aggregation levels according to the queue handling capability of various routers. This means the proposed scheme scales well in high-speed networks. HAFQ improves the fairness among aggregated flows by estimating the number of flows aggregated in a queue and allocating bandwidth to the queue proportionally. In addition, since HAFQ can identify flows having higher arrival rates simultaneously while estimating the number of flows, it enhances the fairness by preferentially dropping their packets. We show that our scheme can provide per-flow fair service through extensive simulation and experiments using a network processor. Since the currently available network processors (Intel IXP1200 in our case) are not high capacity, we also give extensive discussions on the applicability of our scheme to the high-speed core routers.

An overlay traffic control is a way to provide flexible and deployable QoS mechanisms over existing networks, such as the Internet. While most of QoS mechanisms proposed so far require router supports, overlay QoS mechanisms rely on traffic control at transport layer without modifying existing routers in the network. Thus, traffic control algorithms, which are implemented at traffic sources or PEPs (Performance Enhancement Proxies), play a key role in an overlay QoS mechanism. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end prioritization scheme using TCP-Westwood Low-Priority (TCPW-LP), a low-priority traffic control scheme that maximizes the utilization of residual capacity without intrusion on coexisting foreground flows. Simulation and Internet measurement results show that TCPW-LP appropriately provides end-to-end low-priority service without any router supports. Under a wide range of buffer capacity and link error losses, TCPW-LP appropriately defers to foreground flows and better utilizes the residual capacity than other proposed priority schemes or even TCP Reno.

QoS (Quality of Service) control in WLAN (IEEE802.11 Wireless LAN) is becoming increasingly important because WLAN is widely deployed as an access network and also plays a key role in providing seamless QoS communication between wired networks and wireless terminals. Although previous research has attempted to increase total throughput or available bandwidth in WLAN, few studies have treated individual TCP/UDP flow QoS. EDCA in IEEE802.11e might provide prioritized QoS functions that would partially address this problem. However, in uplink flow, which is defined as data moving from a terminal toward an Access Point, EDCA has limitations. These manifest themselves both across classes and in differentiated QoS control between terminals in the same class. Furthermore, 802.11e requires modification of terminals as well as other alterations proposed by other researchers. Instead of 802.11e or other modifications of 802.11, we propose an approach to controlling QoS that requires no terminal modifications or installation of additional software/hardware. The proposed idea is MAC-frame Receiving-Opportunity Control (ROC), in which a MAC (Media Access Control) frame is completely delivered only if it has sufficiently high priority; otherwise either the MAC frame is discarded or an Acknowledge (ACK) to the frame is not sent. The frame that was discarded is forced to accept a back-off waiting time for retransmission, consistent with 802.11DCF. This results in QoS degradation for low priority flows and eventually results in QoS improvements for high priority flows. Performance evaluation shows that the ROC causes some performance degradation in total WLAN throughput but can achieve not only QoS priority control but also arbitrary throughput performance. In particular, the ROC (in the MAC layer) can also permit different throughputs for high priority and low priority flows, conditioned on control processes in other layers. These may include rate adaptation (in the MAC layer) and TCP congestion control (in the TCP layer).

This paper presents an analytical model for network throughput of WLANs, taking into account heterogeneous conditions, namely network nodes transmit different length frames with various offered load individually. The airtime concept, which is often used in multi-hop network analyses, is firstly applied for WLAN analysis. The proposed analytical model can cover the situation that there are saturation and non-saturation nodes in the same network simultaneously, which is the first success in the WLAN analyses. This paper shows the network throughput characteristics of four scenarios. Scenario 1 considers the saturation throughputs for the case that one or two length frames are transmitted at the identical offered load. Scenarios 2 and 3 are prepared for investigating the cases that all network nodes transmit different length frames at the identical offered load and identical length frames at the different offered loads, respectively. The heterogeneous conditions for not only frame length but also offered load are investigated in Scenario 4.

Users of wireless mobile devices need Internet access not only when they stay at home or office, but also when they travel. It may be desirable for such users to select a "longcut route" from their current location to his/her destination that has longer travel time than the shortest route, but provides a better mobile wireless environment. In this paper, we formulate the above situation as the optimization problem of “optimal longcut route selection”, which requires us to find the best route concerning the wireless environment subject to a travel time constraint. For this new problem, we show NP-hardness, propose two pseudo-polynomial time algorithms, and experimental evaluation of the algorithms.

A content-based switch makes forwarding decisions (server selections) based on an application layer information and forwards data in the application layer. After making forwarding decisions, existing content-based switches improve their forwarding performance by TCP splicing, which releases them from maintaining TCP endpoints and allows them to forward data by packet forwarding. However, once content-based switches invoke TCP splicing, they are unable to use the application layer information for forwarding decisions. Thus the existing content-based switches cannot perform a handoff of pipelined HTTP transactions, which can greatly reduce client perceived latencies. This paper proposes an asymmetric TCP splicing and a method to perform the handoff of HTTP transactions between servers. Asymmetric TCP splicing allows the content-based switches to use all the application layer information in the TCP data stream from clients to servers, although it allows the switches to forward the TCP data stream from servers to clients by packet forwarding. The proposed handoff method content-based switches support pipelined HTTP transactions in combination with asymmetric TCP splicing. In the proposed method, the content-based switch utilizes the common function of TCP (TCP half-close) to detect the end of the series of responses from the currently selected server, and it changes the forwarding destination after the client finishes receiving a series of responses from the server. Our evaluation validates that the content-based switch which supports pipelined HTTP transactions by our method can reduce client-perceived latencies when there is a large correlation between destinations of any two consecutive requests.

The primary challenges faced by wireless sensor networks are how to construct the shortest spanning tree and how to determine the optimal sink node position in terms of minimizing the data transmission times and their variances for data gathering from all sensor nodes to a sink node. To solve these two problems, we propose a novel algorithm that uses the polygonal affine shortening algorithm with flow aggregation. This algorithm enables a wireless sensor network that has movable sensor nodes and one movable sink node to self-organize the shortest spanning tree and self-determine the optimal sink node position in a fully distributed manner. We also show that our algorithm is faster than the existing shortest path algorithm in terms of computational complexity.

Because mobile users demand a high quality and energy-friendly video delivery service that efficiently uses wireless resources, we introduce an energy-efficient video delivery system by applying moving route navigation and playout buffer control based on the mobile throughput history data. The proposed system first determines the optimal travel route to achieve high-speed and energy-efficient communications. Then when a user enters a high throughput area, our system temporarily extends the video playout buffer size, and the user aggressively downloads video segments via a high-speed and energy-efficient wireless connection until the extended buffer is filled. After leaving this area, the user consumes video segments from the extended buffer in order to keep smooth video playback without wireless communications. We carry out computer simulations, laboratory and field experiments and confirm that the proposed system can achieve energy-efficient mobile video delivery.

In wireless single-hop networks, IEEE 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) is the standard for Quality of Service (QoS) control. However, it is necessary for controlling QoS to modify the currently used IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF)-compliant terminals as well as Access Points (APs). In addition, it is necessary to modify the parameter of IEEE 802.11e EDCA when the traffic is heavy. This paper proposes a novel scheme to guarantee QoS of high-priority flow with Receiving Opportunity Control in MAC Frame (ROC) employed adaptive flow control in wireless multi-hop network. In the proposed scheme, the edge APs which are directly connected to user terminals estimate the network capacity, and calculate appropriate ACK prevention probability against low-priority flow according to traffic load. Simulation evaluation results show that the proposed scheme guarantees QoS.