A hierarchical proxy architecture with load-based scheduling scheme to support network mobility

A mobile router and all its attached nodes constitute a mobile network. A mobile network may be deployed in a mass transportation to enable people to access the Internet when traveling. However, people in the mobile network have to share scarce wireless bandwidth, and thus tolerate unreasonable long delay if their requests were not scheduled appropriately. In this paper, we present hierarchical-proxy architecture and a load-based scheduling scheme to enhance the performance of the mobile networks with two-tier wireless interfaces. The load-based scheduling scheme classifies Internet services into lightweight and heavyweight services according to their response data sizes and allows heavyweight services to be transferred only in the low-tier network. With the load-based scheduling scheme, we can prevent heavyweight services from occupying the scarce high-tier bandwidth and hampering the transmission of other lightweight services. Simulation results show that the proposed architecture and scheduling scheme can significantly increase the completion rate and decrease the average waiting time of both lightweight and heavyweight services, and thus serve more concurrent requests of multi-services in the mobile network.