Andrea G. Forte

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IEEE 802.11 in the Large: Observations at an IETF Meeting

Introduction
We observed wireless network traffic at the 65th IETF Meeting in Dallas, Texas in March of 2006, attended by approximately 1200 engineers. The event was supported by a very large number of 802.11a and 802.11b access points, often seeing hundreds of simultaneous users. We were particularly interested in the stability of wireless connectivity, load balancing and loss behavior, rather than just traffic.We observed distinct differences among client implementations and saw a number of factors that made the overall system less than optimal, pointing to the need for better design tools and automated adaptation mechanisms.

Challenges in highly congested IEEE 802.11 Networks
TO DO.

Our approach
For more details please refer to our paper IEEE 802.11 in the Large: Observations at an IETF Meeting (pdf).

Related papers

• A. P. Jardosh, K. N. Ramachandran, K. C. Almeroth, and E. M. Belding-Royer, Understanding link-layer behavior in highly congested IEEE 802.11b wireless networks, in E-WIND ’05: Proceeding of the 2005 ACM SIGCOMM workshop on experimental approaches to wireless network design and analysis. New York, NY, USA: ACM Press, 2005, pp. 11–16.
• M. Rodrig, C. Reis, R. Mahajan, D. Wetherall, and J. Zahorjan, Measurement-based characterization of 802.11 in a hotspot setting, in E-WIND ’05: Proceeding of the 2005 ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Experimental approaches to wireless network design and analysis. New York, NY, USA: ACM Press, 2005, pp. 5–10.
• A. Balachandran, G. M. Voelker, P. Bahl, and P. V. Rangan, Characterizing user behavior and network performance in a public wireless LAN, in SIGMETRICS ’02: Proceedings of the 2002 ACM SIGMETRICS international conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems. New York, NY, USA: ACM Press, 2002, pp. 195–205.
• D. Kotz and K. Essien, Analysis of a campus-wide wireless network, in MobiCom ’02: Proceedings of the 8th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking. New York, NY, USA: ACM Press, 2002, pp. 107–118.
• T. Henderson, D. Kotz, and I. Abyzov, The changing usage of a mature campus-wide wireless network, in MobiCom ’04: Proceedings of the 10th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking. New York, NY, USA: ACM Press, 2004, pp. 187–201.