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ORCHESTRA: Supercharging Wireless Backhaul Networks Through Multi-technology Management

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Today’s and tomorrow’s networks are becoming increasingly complex and heterogeneous with a large diversity of devices and technologies. To meet growing demand, and support client mobility there is need for intelligent mechanisms like multi-technology load balancing and handovers. Current solutions, like Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP), fail to provide a fine-grained, coordinated, and transparent answer to this heterogeneity, while the lower layers of the Open Systems Interconnection stack simply ignore it by providing full separation of layers. Therefore, we introduce ORCHESTRA, a data link layer framework for the management of multi-technology networks and devices, enabling packet-level dynamic handovers, load balancing, and duplication across network technologies. The framework is the first of its kind in providing fine-grained packet-level control across different technologies in a network-wide manner. Moreover, it works on top of existing standards without the need for hardware changes. This is achieved through a fully transparent virtual Medium Access Control layer and a Software-Defined Networking controller with global intelligence. The framework is implemented in a prototype running on off-the-shelf hardware and we demonstrate its features across different IEEE 802.11 technologies and 4G (Long Term Evolution). We demonstrate that ORCHESTRA outperforms MPTCP and allows for real-time inter-technology handovers and that overall throughput and reliability are improved in wireless networks.

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Acknowledgements

Patrick Bosch is funded by FWO, a fund for fundamental scientific research, and the Flemish Government, under Grant Number 1S56616N.

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  1. IDLab - Department of Computer Science, University of Antwerp - imec, Sint-Pietersvliet 7, 2000, Antwerp, Belgium

    Tom De Schepper, Patrick Bosch, Jakob Struye, Carlos Donato, Jeroen Famaey & Steven Latré

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De Schepper, T., Bosch, P., Struye, J. et al. ORCHESTRA: Supercharging Wireless Backhaul Networks Through Multi-technology Management. J Netw Syst Manage 28, 1187–1227 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10922-020-09528-x

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