Improving user QoE for residential broadband: Adaptive traffic management at the network edge

Recent increases in network traffic have led to severe congestion in broadband networks. We propose to mitigate this problem with a two-level edge-based solution that incentivizes users to moderate their bandwidth usage based on their actual needs. In the first level, home gateways are given QoE (quality of experience) credits that they can spend to receive more bandwidth at congested times; to ensure fairness, the credits are redistributed to other gateways after they are spent. We show that this scheme guarantees long-term fairness and maximizes users' total satisfaction at the equilibrium. In the second level, each gateway allocates bandwidth among its users and apps according to its own priorities. Gateways can thus customize their bandwidth allocation depending on individual preferences. We develop a prototype of this second-level allocation on commodity wireless routers. We then consider an example scenario and show by simulation and implementation results that our solution outperforms an equal bandwidth allocation, increasing users' overall utility and fairly allocating bandwidth across users.