Vision: Augmenting WiFi Offloading with An Open-source Collaborative Platform

Abstract

Offloading mobile traffic to WiFi networks (WiFi Offloading) is a cost-effective technique to alleviate the pressure on mobile networks for meeting the surge of data capacity demand. However, most existing proposals from standards developing organizations (SDOs) and research communities are facing a deployment dilemma, either due to overlooking device limitations, lack user incentives, or missing operator supports. In this position paper, we introduce an open-source platform for WiFi offloading to tackle the deployment challenge. Our solution leverages the programmable feature of software-defined networking (SDN) to enhance extensibility and deployability in a collaborative manner. Inspired by our field measurements covering 4G/LTE and 802.11ac/n, we exploit context awareness as a use case to demonstrate the efficacy of our solution. We also discuss the potential usage by cloud service providers given the opportunities behind the growing popularity of mobile virtual network operators (MVNO). We have released our platform under open-source licenses to encourage future collaboration and development with SDOs and research communities.