Multihoming and network coding: A new approach to optimize the network performance

Abstract

Over the years, we have witnessed a systematic evolution of heterogeneous networks. Although the capabilities of these networks are constantly being improved, the users’ requirements are increasingly stringent and difficult to fulfil. In this context, it becomes important to optimize the utilization of all available resources in order to obtain a better user experience and a better network utilization.This paper presents a new approach that combines multihoming and network coding to improve the allocation of network resources and the communication performance in heterogeneous technologies. We solve an optimal resource allocation problem, based on a genetic algorithm, that decides when the use of multihoming can bring advantages, which data should be transmitted on which interface and, simultaneously, which coding parameters should be used to encode that data. Then, considering different technologies (Wi-Fi and HSDPA as examples), we model the system performance to evaluate the multihoming and network coding improvements.The results obtained show the advantages of multihoming and the optimal configuration to maximize system performance, the network coding performance improvement in a multihoming environment, in terms of delay, throughput and packets loss probability, and the benefits provided through the multihoming and network coding combination.