Performance analysis of gateway load balancing in ad hoc networks with random topologies

  • Authors:

  • Vinh Pham;Erlend Larsen;Paal E. Engelstad;Øivind Kure

  • Affiliations:

  • University Graduate Center, Kjeller, Norway;University Graduate Center, Kjeller, Norway;SimTel (Telenor/Simula), Fornebu, Norway;Q2S NTNU, Trondheim, Norway

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 7th ACM international symposium on Mobility management and wireless access
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

In wireless multihop networks such as MANETs or Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN), an Internet gateway (IGW) is a node that provides Internet connectivity, linking the wireless network with the global Internet. Congestion around the IGW represents a potential bottleneck for all Internet traffic that has to pass through the IGW. To alleviate this problem, the common solution is to have multiple IGWs in the network. However in order to take advantage of the capacity provided by multiple gateways, the routing protocol utilized must efficiently load balance the traffic among available IGWs such that the network performance is optimized. In this context, it is questioned to which extent it is possible to enhance the performance by utilizing a load balancing metric instead for the traditional shortest path metric. Furthermore, what are the factors that may set an upper limit for the performance that can be achieved. The aim of our investigation is to seek the answers to these questions through extensive simulations of a large number of random topologies. While a number of other studies have reported potential benefits of load balancing with some specific network topologies, to the best of our knowledge none have conducted similar studies covering a larger number of random topologies.