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Distributed WiFi detection and integration in dense urban mobile Peer-to-Peer networks

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Abstract

Running Peer-to-Peer applications—such as multimedia streaming or file sharing—on mobile devices significantly increases the congestion in 3G access networks. Offloading traffic from 3G to WiFi domains is promising in such scenarios, since communication is possible without generating any load in the WiFi’s uplink or in the Internet, given that peers are located in the same WiFi domain. However, in today’s urban areas devices are commonly in range of dozens of infrastructure-based WiFi domains, a fact that calls for an efficient rendezvous mechanism. In this article, we propose a rendezvous mechanism that efficiently enables physically close mobile devices running an arbitrary P2P application to peer with each other in a common WiFi domain. The mechanism builds upon tree-based collection, aggregation, and distribution of WiFi information. Using a stochastic model, we estimate the overhead of the mechanism based on WiFi density statistics from real world urban areas. We further show how to reduce this overhead on the expense of a reduced rendezvous success probability by applying Bloom Filters. Simulations of a tree-based Peer-to-Peer media streaming application demonstrate that the mechanism can in fact support effective offloading of P2P traffic to WiFi domains.

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Notes

  1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/technology/companies/03att. html. Accessed 23 July 2012

  2. Some devices allow to act as an access point. This also comes with comparably high additional energy overhead.

  3. The case for bounded m is left out here, but considered in the evaluations provided later.

  4. This value has been chosen as a calculation base. The influence of the fanout is discussed later in this article.

  5. 3G cells are considered to have distinct capacities in up- and downstream direction, while WiFi domains provide a medium with shared capacity.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially funded as part of the Spontaneous Virtual Networks (SpoVNet) project by the Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg within the BW-FIT program and as part of the Young Investigator Group Controlling Heterogeneous and Dynamic Mobile Grid and Peer-to-Peer Systems (CoMoGriP) by the Concept for the Future of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) within the framework of the German Excellence Initiative.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Telematics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Zirkel 2, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Christian Hübsch, Oliver P. Waldhorst & Mario Hock

  2. Höfenstraße 20, 78052, Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany

    Mario Hock

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  1. Christian Hübsch
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  2. Oliver P. Waldhorst
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  3. Mario Hock
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Correspondence to Christian Hübsch.

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Hübsch, C., Waldhorst, O.P. & Hock, M. Distributed WiFi detection and integration in dense urban mobile Peer-to-Peer networks. Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl. 5, 323–339 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-012-0159-1

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