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A measurement study of vehicular internet access using in situ Wi-Fi networks Vladimir Bychkovsky, Bret Hull, Allen Miu, Hari Balakrishnan, and Samuel Madden MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory By – Anup Jaya Prakash.
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A measurement study of vehicular internet access using in situ Wi-Fi networksVladimir Bychkovsky, Bret Hull, Allen Miu, Hari Balakrishnan, and Samuel MaddenMIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory By – Anup Jaya Prakash
Outline of the presentation • Introduction • Questions • Answers – The Measurement Study • The Experiment • Connectivity Results • Packet Loss and Data Transfers • Discussions • Conclusion
Introduction • 14.3 million homes in the US have Wi-Fi access points. • Most of the links are often idle. • Can be used by others by providing controlled access. • What would be the performance?
Questions • What is the distribution of the duration of connectivity per AP? • What is the distribution of the duration of disconnectivity • How long does it take for a client to scan, associate, and obtain an IP address? • What is the distribution of the coverage region of an AP? • What is the distribution of packet loss and data transfer rates? • What is the effect of a car’s speed on these metrics?
Answers – The Measurement Study • A set of in situ open AP’s deployed in and around Boston. • 9 Distinct cars fitted with embedded computers. • They try to associate with an AP and if successful, try to obtain an IP address. • Next they do an end-to-end ping to a well known IP. • If this is successful, they start periodic local pings to next hop IP router and initiates a transfer to the internet site.
Answers… • The Measurement study is based on uploads. Two reasons are provided for this • New Applications treat vehicles as data source in wireless sensor networks ( CarTel Project ) • Download performance will be at least as good as the upload performance • The Results are Divided into 2 categories • Connectivity • Data transfer performance
The Experiment • CarTel Embedded Computer – Has a 802.11b Wi-Fi card, GPS unit, 128 MB RAM, 1 GB Flash memory, running Linux 2.4.31. • Scanping – Application used for the experimentation purpose • GPS used to find position and speed of the car. • Computer draws power from the car. Boots up when ignition is turned
The Experiment - Processes • Scan – Scan for AP’s in the Area • Association – Try to Associate with one of the AP’s • Address Configuration – Acquire an IP • Single end-to-end ping – Try for an end-to-end ping • Connectivity and uploads – Measure bandwidth and connectivity
Scan • Discovery of the AP’s in an area • For each discovered AP, the ESSID, BSSID, Frequency, Signal strength and privacy bits (if any) are logged. • Done till at least one AP is discovered, then proceeds to next step
Association • Scanping issues a command to Wi-Fi interface to associate with the AP. • For multiple APs, highest signal strength is taken into account • The result of association along with start time and duration of operation is logged • Jumps to first step if failed else runs tcpdump to monitor furthur networking activity.
Address Configuration • Uses dhcpcd to obtain an IP address. • Checks local cache for information on current AP. • If exists then uses the information. • Otherwise tries to obtain an IP address • If it fails, the client ties out after 5 secs and proceeds to step 1.
Single End-to-End Ping • Once it obtains an IP, it starts a end-to-end ping every 200ms until the first successful ping or until 2 sec elapse. • This is to estimate end-to-end connectivity duration
Connectivity and Uploads • 2 processes in parallel • AP Pings – Ping the first hop router every 100ms and log the time and the result of the ping • TCP uploads – Establish a TCP connection to central sever and deliver data.
Connectivity Results • The Connectivity results are organized into 4 parts namely • Wi-Fi Association and IP Address Acquisition – first 3 graphs • Connectivity Duration – 4th, 5th and 6th graphs • Periods without connectivity – 7th graph • AP coverage – 8th, 9th and 10th graphs
Connectivity Results… CDF for distribution of time for various phases of activities after a successful association
Connectivity Results… Distribution of scan and association times
Connectivity Results… Distribution of time for different types of IP acquisition
Connectivity Results… CDF of Association Durations
Connectivity Results… CDF of Average speeds for Associations
Connectivity Results… Plot of Connection duration Vs Speed
Connectivity Results… CDF of time between connectivity events between 4 types of events
Connectivity Results… CDF of no. of AP’s discovered in successful scan
Connectivity Results… Fraction of associations to any give AP
Connectivity Results… CDF of Connection Coverage
Packet Loss and Data Transfers • These Results are divided into two categories • Wi-Fi packet loss rates • TCP throughput
Wi-Fi Packet Loss Rates CDF of fraction of AP pings that succeeded per connection
Wi-Fi Packet Loss Rates… Plot of Wi-Fi packet delivery rate vs the car speed
TCP Throughput CDF of duration between association and first TCP data ACK
TCP Throughput… CDF of per connection end-to-end throughput
TCP Throughput… CDF of per connection bytes received at server
Discussion • The idea of the paper holds much promise • What are the other issues in implementation of such networks • Lets see them one by one
Open Wi-Fi Networks • Incentives to users and ISPs • Tiered security level with different levels of access controll and data rates at different tiers
Connectivity and Transport • Continuous connectivity to mobile users • If not continuous then some modeling change would be needed
Fast and Friendly Connection Establishment • Fast connection establishment and fair utilization of bandwidth necessary • Three possible optimizations • Connection initiation timing – optimize transport protocol to address this issue • Fairness – Rate limiting at AP’s or use cooperative TCP protocols
Conclusion • With just 3.2% of total AP’s participating in the system, the clients remain connected for 24 sec on an average. • The mean period of disconnectivity was 260 seconds which would reduce if the participation increased • Several commercial, legal and policy issues need to be addressed in order to make this vision a reality