Empowering software defined wireless Networks through Media Independent Handover management

Internet access and service utilization has been exploding in mobile devices, through the leverage of WLAN, 3G and now LTE connections. It is this explosion as well that is stressing the underlying fabric of the Internet, and motivating new solutions, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), to build the controlling support and extension capabilities of the Future Internet. However, SDN has yet to reach the necessary traction to be deployed, and has been more relayed towards experimentation supporting frameworks and away from wireless environments. This paper explores SDN mechanisms and increments them with Media Independent Handover services from the IEEE 802.21 standard, coupling them in a single framework for the dynamic optimized support of OpenFlow path establishment and wireless connectivity establishment. The framework was implemented over open-source software in a physical testbed, with results showing the benefits that this solution brings in terms of performance and signaling overhead, when compared with more basic approaches.