Characterization of wireless multi-device users

There has been a huge growth in the number of wireless-enabled devices possessed by a user. Over two third of adults in United States currently own three devices — laptop, smartphone and tablet. In this paper, we provide a first look at the network usage behavior of today´s multi-device users. Using the data collected from a large university campus, we provide a detailed measurement-based characterization study of over 30,000 users. Our objective is to understand how existence of multiple wireless devices affect the network usage behavior of users. Specifically, we study the usage pattern of devices, how the usage of difference devices overlap in time, user´s preferences of accessing sensitive content and device-specific factors that govern their choice of WiFi encryption type. The study reveals numerous interesting findings such as how current DHCP configurations are oblivious to multiple devices which results in inefficient utilization of available IP address space.