Traffic management and resource allocation in small wired/wireless networks

We consider the problem of traffic management in small networks with both wireless and wired devices, connected to the Internet through a single gateway. Examples of such networks are small office networks or residential networks, where typically traffic management is limited to flow prioritization through port-based filtering. We propose a practical resource allocation framework that provides simple mechanisms to applications and users to enable traffic management functionality currently not present due to the distributed nature of the system and various technology or protocol limitations. To allow for control irrespective of whether traffic flows cross wireless, wired or even broadband links, the proposed framework jointly optimizes rate allocations across wireless and wired devices in a weighted fair manner. Additionally, we propose a model for estimating the achievable capacity regions in wireless networks to overcome the absence of the queue information. This model is used by the controller to achieve a specific rate allocation. We evaluate a decentralized, host-based implementation of the proposed framework. The controller is incrementally deployable by not requiring modifications to existing network protocols and equipment or the wireless MAC. Using analytical methods and experimental results with realistic traffic, we show that our controller is stable with fast convergence for both UDP and TCP traffic, achieves weighted fairness, and mitigates scheduling inefficiencies of the existing hardware.