Performance evaluation of handover association mechanisms in SDN-based wireless network

In recent years, wireless LANs (WiFi) has been a popular options for mobile devices to connect to the network. As networks are becoming larger and more complex, solutions that simplify network operation and management are urgently needed. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a state-of-the-art paradigm addressing this issue. While SDN is basically very general, in this work, networking performance related to the handover events is addressed in SDN-based wireless networks. For the investigation, Mininet WiFi, an extension to Mininet as the most popular SDN emulation environment, is used. Two association methods supported in Mininet Wi-Fi are Strongest-Signal-First (SSF) and Least-Loaded-First (LLF). These two methods has their own mechanisms. In this research, an experiment is conducted to observe how association control works in handover scenario. A performace analysis of transfer, jitter, and packet loss are also discussed. The result of the experiment is LLF gains better performance than SSF mode in every sub-scenario.