Exploiting Parallel Networks in Intermittently-Connected Mobile Environments

The rapid increase and proliferation of mobile wireless technologies has led to the rise of new problems that fall under the umbrella of challenged networks, namely, intermittent network connectivity. This diversity in wireless devices, along with their convergence, has granted users access to multiple heterogeneous networks available in parallel. Nowadays, a user generally expects to be connected in all places at all times. To better meet this expectation, we propose a system that takes advantage of intermittent connection opportunities while exploiting other networks available in parallel. We build our system over the parallel networks architecture, ParaNets, which suggests using heterogeneous networks simultaneously as data and control channels. Our system adopts the Data Bundling System for Intermittent Connections (DBS-IC), previously proposed as a stand-alone architecture for intermittent connectivity, and integrates it with the ParaNets architecture. We evaluate our system by fully implementing a ParaNets-enabled version of DBS-IC and thoroughly testing it over emulated network conditions. Characteristics of these networks are adopted based on real-life data on 802.11, 3G cell, and satellite networks. Our results show how minimal exploitation of parallel networks largely optimizes both cost and delivery rate.