SDN-based wireless bandwidth slicing

Current wireless enterprise networks pose a user access management challenge. That is, an enterprise network should provide service to diverse user devices whose resource allocation policies should be treated differently according to the company policy. Software-defined network (SDN) is a suitable candidate to meet the challenge due to its centralized and dynamic control features. Based on the OpenFlow protocol, which is a primitive to realize a software-defined network, this work implements a bandwidth slicing technique on a commercial WiFi AP. The operating system in the AP is flashed into the OpenWrt linux system to enable the OpenFlow client function. Experimental results show that users in different groups experience different amount of bandwidth and the share proportions of the wireless bandwidth can be adjusted dynamically in real time. Moreover, illustrative results show different video quality presented on user devices of different groups, verifying the applicability of the bandwidth slicing technique.