Self-organizing TCP with Multiple Wireless LAN

Wireless access networks have been widely deployed in urban areas. However, current network managers on mobile devices cannot provide continuous connectivity for applications when the device is moving from one access network to another. In this paper, we propose a Self-Organizing Network Manager (SONM). It organizes different wireless links to provide more reliable connectivity for upper layer protocols and applications. To properly switch between different wireless access networks, SONM makes decisions by using a heuristic method that takes into account signal strength, link quality, and accelerometer values from the mobile device. SONM creates redundant links when needed, and manages configurations in different layers of the TCP/IP stack. We partially implement SONM to support multiple WiFi networks and test the application goodput. Test results validate that SONM is able to smoothly switch from one AP to another, without introducing perceivable performance degradation.