On the Potential of Flow-Based Routing in Multihomed Environments

The data rates provisioned by broadband Internet access connections continue to fall short of the requirements posed by emerging applications. Yet the potential of statis-tical multiplexing of the last mile broadband connections remains unexploited even as the average utilization of these connections remains low. Despite recent work in this area [15, 20], two key questions remain unanswered: a) What is the attainable bene-fit of broadband access sharing? and b) How much of this benefit is realizable given real-world constraints? In this work we quantify the attainable benefit of a multihomed broadband access environment by proposing and evaluating several flow-based access sharing policies using a custom flow-based simulator. We then analyze how much of the performance benefit is lost due to real-world constraints by migrating from simula-tions to a test-lab environment employing a wireless network. Our results show that in today’s broadband Internet access scenarios, a significant reduction in download times by up to a factor of 3 is achievable. Chapter