Scalability study of wireless mesh networks with dynamic stream merging capability

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of users who access online videos from wireless access networks. It is highly desirable that such wireless networks are robust in handling sudden spurts in demand for some videos due to special events. An abrupt increase in the network usage should not significantly impact normal access to other applications. In this work, we tackle this problem in wireless mesh access networks by applying a distributed video sharing technique called Dynamic Stream Merging (DSM). DSM improves the robustness of the access network without directives from the video servers. We perform comprehensive simulation study based on a grid network topology. The experimental results, based on NS2 simulation, indicate that DSM is highly scalable. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.