Unified Heterogeneous Networking Design

Abstract

The Internet was designed under the assumption that end-hosts are stationary and have one interface. Current mobile devices have multiple network interfaces, such as Wi-Fi, LTE, WiMAX, and possibly Ethernet. Such diverse network connectivity can be used to increase both reliability and performance by running applications over multiple links sequentially, for a seamless user experience, or in parallel, for bandwidth and performance enhancements. Users are also consuming Internet services from multiple locations and devices, such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and IP-enabled TVs. The existing networking stack, however, offers almost no support for intelligently exploiting such network, location and device diversity.Since, most Internet devices today are mobile, we propose a unified networking architecture that makes optimal use of a heterogeneous dynamic environment, both in terms of networks and user devices. The system core functionalities include mobility, multi-homing, multipath, and disruption tolerance. The system enables mobile nodes to make decisions about how and when to use each or a combination of networks, in a secure manner. With this new architecture, we envision a shift from current applications supporting a single network, location, and device at a time, to applications that can support multiple networks, multiple locations, and multiple devices.

Real-time communications

“…On today's networks, the wire or channel carries multiple applications across a mesh of different data-links, virtual circuits, channels, streams, and administrative domains, all of which have distinct -and often minimal -central controls. Seamless handoffs between different network technologies can be implemented at layer two using Software Defined Networks (SDN) techniques, layer three, using the OMNE method [1] or at the application layer. In some cases, we implement connections at layer four; in others we implement them at layer five.…”