Adaptive Switching

The adaptability of MultiNet is demonstrated in Figure 5. The Adaptive Buffer switching strategy is evaluated by running our system for two networks, an ad hoc and an infrastructure network, for 150 seconds. The plots at the top of Figure 5 show the traffic seen on both the wireless networks, and the ones at the bottom of this figure show the corresponding effect on the activity period of each network. As a result of the adaptive switching strategy the activity period of the networks vary according to the traffic seen on them. Initially when there is no traffic on either network, MultiNet gives equal time to both networks. After 20 seconds there is more traffic on the ad hoc network, and so MultiNet allocates more time to it. The traffic on the infrastructure network is greater than the traffic on the ad hoc network after around 110 seconds. Consequently, the infrastructure network is allocated more time. This correspondence between relative traffic on a network and its activity periods is evident in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Variation of the activity period for two networks with time. The activity period of a network is directly proportional to the relative traffic on it.

MultiNet, when used with adaptive switching schemes, provides true zero configuration. Prior schemes, such as Wireless Zero Configuration (WZC), require users to specify a list of preferred networks, and WZC only connects to the most preferred available wireless network. The adaptive switching strategies require a user to specify a list of preferred networks, and the card connects to all the networks giving time to a network based on the amount of traffic on it.