On the Potential of Flow-Based Routing in Multihomed Environments

The data rates provisioned by broadband Internet access con ne tions continue to fall short of the requirements posed by emerging applications. Y et the potential of statistical multiplexing of the last mile broadband connections r emains unexploited even as the average utilization of these connections remains low. D espite recent work in this area [15, 20], two key questions remain unanswered: a) What i s the attainable benefit of broadband access sharing? and b) How much of this benefit is realizable given real-world constraints? In this work we quantify the attain able benefit of a multihomed broadband access environment by proposing and evaluating s everal flow-based access sharing policies using a custom flow-based simulator. We the n analyze how much of the performance benefit is lost due to real-world constraint s by migrating from simulations to a test-lab environment employing a wireless networ k. Our results show that in today’s broadband Internet access scenarios, a significant reduction in download times by up to a factor of 3 is achievable.