COAP: A Software-Defined Approach for Home WLAN Management through an Open API

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in the adoption and usage of WiFi enabled networked devices at homes such as laptops, handheld device and wireless entertainment devices. In dense wireless deployments at homes, such as apartment buildings, neighboring home WLANs share the same unlicensed spectrum by deploying consumer-grade access points in their individual homes. In such environments, WiFi networks can suffer from intermittent performance issues such as wireless packet losses, interference from WiFi and non-WiFi sources due to the increasing diversity of devices that share the spectrum. In this paper, we propose a vendor-neutral cloud-based centralized framework called COAP to configure, co-ordinate and manage individual home APs using an open API implemented over the OpenFlow SDN framework. This paper describes the framework and motivates the potential benefits of the framework in home WLANs.