Performance Issues with Vertical Handovers - Experiences from GPRS Cellular and WLAN Hot-spots Integration

Interworking heterogeneous wireless access technologies is an important step towards building the next generation, all-IP wireless access infrastructure. In this paper, we present an experimental study of inter-network mobility between GPRS Cellular and 802.11b-based WLAN hot-spots, and deeply analyse its impact on active transport TCP flows. Our experiments were conducted over a loosely-coupled, Mobile IPv6-based, GPRS-WLAN experimental testbed. Detailed analysis from packet traces of inter-network (vertical) handovers reveals a number of performance bottlenecks. In particular, the disparity in the round trip time and bandwidth offered by GPRS and WLAN networks, and presence of deep buffers in GPRS, can aggravate performance during vertical handovers. This paper, therefore, summerizes practical experiences and challenges of providing transparent mobility in heterogeneous environments. Based on the observations, we propose a number of network-layer handover optimisation techniques, e....

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: PERCOM
• Authors: Rajiv Chakravorty, Pablo Vidales, Kavitha Subramanian, Ian Pratt, Jon Crowcroft
• Keywords: Active Transport Tcp, All-IP Wireless Access, Heterogeneous Wireless Access, PERCOM 2004, Wireless Networks