Dynamic role assignment in Software-Defined Wireless Networks

Software-defined networking paradigms have found their way into wireless edge networks, allowing network slicing, mobility management, and resource allocation. This paper presents dynamic role assignment as a novel approach to software-defined network topology management for wireless edge devices, such as laptops, tablets and smartphones. It combines the centralized control of wireless Network Interface Controller (NIC) modes with Network Function Virtualization (NFV) to integrate network topology transitions as well as network service and application service placement within a single mechanism. Our proposal is evaluated with respect to latency, bandwidth, and power consumption of the edge nodes. The experimental results show significant differences in both bandwidth (up to 18%) and power consumption (up to 15%) for playing different roles, and when using (a) a web proxy and (b) an intrusion prevention system as examples of application services.