Traffic engineering for the wireless LAN access point

Today almost all popular wireless LAN applications such as web access, email processing, telnet, FTP, and data base access are using client-server architecture. A mobile client, such as a laptop equipped with a WLAN, connects to the wired backbone network through an access point (AP) to establish a connection to the fixed server providing the application. In planning to deploy a WLAN a system architect must have an estimate of the number of terminals that are supported by each AP in a WLAN. The number of supported terminals depends on the type of application, network stability factor, and the effect of the hidden terminals. This paper provides an analytical framework to calculate the number of terminals and relate it to these parameters. The traffic pattern of each WLAN application is modeled as a statistically variable rate source. The behavior of the two way traffic for each application is modeled with a statistical ratio of the up-link to down-link traffic. Using empirical data from HP open view, WLRL benchmark tool, and MS Internet Explorer the statistics of the network parameters are measured. The statistical information from the empirical data is used in the analytical framework to obtain the number of users per AP for different applications.