Hotspot slicer: Slicing virtualized home Wi-Fi networks for air-time guarantee and traffic isolation

Abstract

Nowadays, the usage of multiple virtual wireless networks on top of one physical AP is very common in home Wi-Fi networks. Be it Hotspots of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) used for offloading their traffic, community networks or plain so-called "Guest-Networks". Whereas the home user (AP owner) in the best case should not even be aware that his network connection is shared. Most of the ISPs and MNOs are now trying to convince their customers to install an additional virtual wireless hotspot network on their home AP and offer them in return the free usage of all other available hotspots. But, currently most costumers are skeptical as the providers cannot guarantee a downlink slice of air-time or real separation in time on the wireless access network. In this paper we demonstrate by using a novel downlink slicing scheme applied on commercial off-the-shelf hardware, how slicing on MAC level can be applied to truly guarantee a fixed amount of air-time for the home user and provide complete traffic separation in time between the home and the hotspot network. Moreover, our demonstrator shows the benefits of the approach by comparing the quality of a high definition video stream with and without our MAC slicing approach.