On Demand Connectivity Sharing: Queuing management and load balancing for User-Provided Networks

Abstract

We introduce the concept of “On Demand Connectivity Sharing”, which we build on top of User-Provided Networks (UPNs). UPNs were recently proposed as a new connectivity paradigm, according to which home-users share their broadband Internet connection with roaming guests. We enhance this paradigm with incentives, rules and policies, based on which: (i) home-users provide on-demand connectivity only (i.e., they do not explicitly allocate a portion of their bandwidth) and (ii) guest-users utilize resources that remain unexploited from the respective home-users. We realize the “On Demand Connectivity Sharing” concept through (i) a queuing algorithm that classifies traffic according to its source (i.e., home- or guest-traffic) and prioritizes home- against guest-traffic accordingly and (ii) a probabilistic load-balancing algorithm that guarantees smooth cooperation between home- and guest-users. We show both analytically and through extensive performance evaluation that it is indeed possible for a home-user to share his connection with guest-, roaming-users without any practical impact on his own network performance. The concept of “On Demand Connectivity Sharing” through User-Provided Networks is expected to receive a lot of attention in the years to come, since it enables a new notion of autonomous and self-organized mobile computing. For example, we gather information regarding the location and range of real WiFi access points in the city center of London and we show that a walking user can receive acceptable services, when acting as a guest-user and gets resources from near-by home-networks.