Traffi c Balancing with Dynamic Access Point Selection in WLANs

ABSTRACT: Nowadays, since devices can fi nd more than one access point (AP) in wireless local area networks (WLANs), we are supposed to choose the access point which tends to provide the best performance based on the kind of usage for which it is specifi ed. Currently, in order to select the most appropriate AP, computers use the received signal strength which is referred to as the Signal Strength Strategy (SSS). But this leads to the concentration of many nodes on the nearest AP; as a consequence, unbalanced traffi c load will be imposed on WLAN. However, there may be some APs at a nearby location which were still in the idle mode. In this paper, we have tried to balance the traffi c of WLANs with a dynamic method for the access point selection by taking into account the throughput which is achieved from the specifi c servers over the Internet (not just the throughput of the node to an AP). Therefore, we have specifi ed some servers on the Internet as our reference servers for measuring the Internet bit rate. This method was aimed at reducing the negative impact of the low throughput of one node on the others, without transmitting extra packets. Besides, to stabilize the wireless connection, the method benefi ted from the signal strength as well as the applied throughput based on the desired usage of the network and special QoS parameters, such as minimizing power consumption, UDP or TCP connection. Moreover, two different scenarios were simulated. In fact, the fi rst one showed the importance of measuring the throughput of the Internet connection and the second one showed reduction of the negative infl uence