Off-the-Shelf Software-defined Wi-Fi Networks

Wi-Fi networks were one of the first use-cases for Software-defined networking (SDN). However, to deploy a software-defined Wi-Fi network today, one has to rely on research prototypes with availability, documentation, hardware requirements, and scalability issues. To alleviate this situation, we demonstrate two simple techniques to bring SDN functionality to existing Wi-Fi networks and discuss their benefits and short-comings. Researchers can use our techniques to convert their existing Wi-Fi testbeds into software defined Wi-Fi testbeds. Our two techniques thus significantly lower the barrier-to-entry for deploying software-defined Wi-Fi networks.