Multilink Transfer over Heterogeneous Networks

In a world with numerous heterogeneous wireless technologies (e.g. WLAN, HSPA, WiMAX, Bluetooth, etc.), devices such as cell phones and laptops are more and more often equipped with multiple communication interfaces. Motivated by this trend, major wireless providers, such as Telenor [1], are looking for solutions that can fully utilize multiple technologies when present. While the term multilink refers to one host attached to many access networks, multihoming describes the method of maintaining multiple IP addresses on a single device, and the term multipath implies using different multihop end-to-end paths for routing. Although these three problems are closely related, our work focuses on multilink transfer and simultaneously utilizing all available interfaces. In theory [2], exploiting multiple links has several potential benefits: increased throughput by link aggregation, added fault tolerance by sending redundant data over independent links, and increased connectivity by combining several coverage areas.