Software-defined mobility in IP based Wi-Fi networks: Design proposal and future directions

Current networking devices are limited in their capabilities to dynamically adjust their behaviour with respect to the location changes induced by the mobility of communicating partners. This adversely affects the performance of applications running on top of IP-based wireless networks. Software Defined Networks (SDN) provide the strength of network programability which facilitates on-demand customization of underlying network according to the application context. In this paper, we propose our methodology for seamless mobility in IP-based Wi-Fi networks using SDN. Our solution works for both layer-2 and layer-3 mobility scenarios and is able to cater the needs of Wi-Fi networks. We have evaluated our approach with respect to handover delay, route establishment delay, data loss and throughput both for UDP and TCP traffic. Emulation results obtained establish the applicability of our approach.