Mobility, wireless and QoS

  • Authors:
  • A. -L. Burness

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • BT Technology Journal
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

The proliferation of wireless local area networks has opened doors to numerous service opportunities. However, they tend to be limited to delay-tolerant applications. We envisage an environment where a single device is used for all types of communication and roaming freely between different wireless and wired technologies and network operators. To achieve this will require quality of service (QoS) handled appropriately. Within the IP community, QoS has generally been considered end-to-end over the fixed network. Wireless networks and mobile users add a new set of problems, which have only seen highly specialised solutions within the 2G/3G mobile telephone communities. This paper examines these problems and proposes a solution whereby QoS is dealt with by the end terminals through adaptive applications and end-to-end congestion control. This does not require explicit knowledge of the type of network, and does not need expensive whole network upgrades. We believe that this approach can improve the experience of users of current wireless LAN networks, and we are currently verifying and exploring our ideas on a WLAN test bed.