Offloading Delay Tolerant Data through Opportunistic Networks

Content distribution in today’s Internet is facing fundamental challenges. The amount of connected devices is rapidly increasing as mobile devices become more popular and various kinds of smart devices become connected. This constantly growing population of devices does not only increase the amount of transferred data per se, but also require higher bandwidth in order to keep up with today’s online service standards. Content producers, such as streaming services of video and music, aim at providing the best possible quality of experience (QoE) to the end user. However, the available network service providers who are responsible for delivering the service may not always have the capability to provide the required bandwidth and reliability. This is primarily because of timeouts and packet loss caused by weak signal levels, network congestion or connection handovers — affecting especially mobile content consumers. This further discredits Internet service providers and mobile network operators (MNO) who are already struggling with providing the quality of service (QoS) that they advertise [6]. One way to bypass this bottleneck is through offloading data over alternative networks. Our research studies the feasibility to offload over opportunistic networks consisting of peer mobile users and occasional Wi-Fi.