Flexible application driven network striping over Wireless Wide Area Networks
Asfandyar Qureshi · 2005
Inverse multiplexing, or network striping, allows the construction of a high-bandwidth virtual channel from a collection of multiple low-bandwidth network channels. Strip-ing systems usually employ a packet scheduling policy that allows applications to be oblivious of the way in which packets are routed to specific network channels. Though this is appropriate for many applications, many other applications can benefit from an approach that explicitly involves the application in the determination of the striping policy. Horde is middleware that facilitates flexible striping over Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) channels. Horde is unusual in that it separates the striping policy from the striping mechanism. It allows applications to describe network Quality-of-Service (QoS) objectives that the striping mechanism attempts to satisfy. Horde can be used by a set of data streams, each with its own QoS policy, to stripe data over a set of WWAN channels. The WWAN QoS variations observed across different channels and in time, provide opportunities to modulate stream QoS through scheduling.