Abstract
Current mobile phones and tablets are equipped with two technologies for accessing the Internet: WiFi and Cellular. Deciding which of these two interfaces provides faster data transfer is often non-trivial, but most of the currently used devices use a simple priority scheme that prefers WiFi to Cellular.
In this paper, we propose a novel system that automatically selects the best link available in the current user location. The system periodically probes the bandwidth available on both links and makes statistical predictions, while avoiding excessive data and battery usage. We experimentally validated our approach using a dedicated application for Android.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Aguehian, S.: Smart WiFi Toggler. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sebouh00.smartwifitoggler&hl=en. Accessed: 29 January 2015
Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global mobile data traffic forecast update, 2014–2019, Cisco Systems Inc. (2014)
Witteeveen, D., Ward, S.: Global Mobile Consumer Survey 2013 (2013). http://goo.gl/P6xJvy. Accessed: 29 January 2015
Abinader, F.M., Almeida, E.P., Choudhury, S., Sousa, V.A., Cavalcante, A.M., Chaves, F.S., Tuomaala, E., Vieira, R.D., Doppler, K.: Performance evaluation of IEEE 802.11n WLAN in dense deployment scenarios. In: Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Fall), pp. 1–5. IEEE (2014)
Huang, J., Qian, F., Guo, Y., Zhou, Y., Xu, Q., Mao, Z.M., Sen, S., Spatscheck, O.: An in-depth study of LTE: effect of network protocol and application behavior on performance. In: ACM SIGCOMM 2013 Proceedings, pp. 363–374. ACM (2013)
Huang, J., Qian, F., Gerber, A., Mao, Z.M., Sen, S., Spatscheck, O.: A close examination of performance and power characteristics of 4G LTE networks. In: ACM MobiSys 2012 Proceedings, pp. 225–238. ACM (2012)
Dimatteo, S., Hui, P., Han, B., Li, V.O.: Cellular traffic offloading through wifi networks. In: 2011 IEEE 8th International Conference on Mobile Adhoc and Sensor Systems (MASS), pp. 192–201. IEEE (2011)
Sankaran, C.: Data offloading techniques in 3gpp rel-10 networks: A tutorial. Commun. Mag. 50(6), 46–53 (2012). IEEE
Bennis, M., Simsek, M., Czylwik, A., Saad, W., Valentin, S., Debbah, M.: When cellular meets wifi in wireless small cell networks. Commun. Mag. 51(6), 44–50 (2013). IEEE
Gao, L., Iosifidis, G., Huang, J., Tassiulas, L.: Economics of mobile data offloading. In: 2013 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS), pp. 351–356. IEEE (2013)
Ribeiro, V., Riedi, R., Baraniuk, R., Navratil, J., Cottrell, L.: pathchirp: Efficient available bandwidth estimation for network paths. In: Passive and Active Measurement Workshop, vol. 4 (2003)
Strauss, J., Katabi, D., Kaashoek, F.: A measurement study of available bandwidth estimation tools. In: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement, pp. 39–44. ACM (2003)
Goldoni, E., Rossi, G., Torelli, A.: Assolo, a new method for available bandwidth estimation. In: Fourth International Conference on Internet Monitoring and Protection, ICIMP 2009, pp. 130–136. IEEE (2009)
Goldoni, E., Schivi, M.: End-to-end available bandwidth estimation tools, an experimental comparison. In: Ricciato, F., Mellia, M., Biersack, E. (eds.) TMA 2010. LNCS, vol. 6003, pp. 171–182. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Croce, D., Mellia, M., Leonardi, E.: The quest for bandwidth estimation techniques for large-scale distributed systems. ACM SIGMETRICS Perform. Eval. Rev. 37(3), 20–25 (2010)
Gorawski, M., Grochla, K.: Review of mobility models for performance evaluation of wireless networks. In: Gruca, A., Czachórski, T., Kozielski, S. (eds.) Man-Machine Interactions 3. AISC, vol. 242, pp. 573–584. Springer, Heidelberg (2014)
Ookla: Speedtest.net Mobile. http://www.speedtest.net/mobile/. Accessed: 16 February 2015
Acknowledgment
This work was funded by the Polish National Centre for Research and Development, under research grant nr LIDER/10/194/L-3/11/: project “Optimization and load balancing in next generation wireless networks”, http://projekty.iitis.pl/zosb.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Foremski, P., Grochla, K. (2015). LTE or WiFi? Client-Side Internet Link Selection for Smartphones. In: Gaj, P., Kwiecień, A., Stera, P. (eds) Computer Networks. CN 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 522. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19419-6_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19419-6_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-19418-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-19419-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)