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Architecture and Evaluation of An Unplanned 802.11b Mesh Network
Architecture and Evaluation of An Unplanned 802.11b Mesh Network
Throughput (kbits/sec)
3000
2 1634 817 545
5.5 3435 1718 1145 2500
11 5013 2506 1671
2000
1500
Table 2: Theoretical loss-free maximum through-
put over one, two, and three hops for each 802.11b 1000
transmit bit-rate, with 1500-byte packets.
500
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000
Hops Number Throughput Latency
of nodes (kbits/sec) (ms) Distance (meters)
1 12 2752 9
2 8 940 19 4000
3 5 552 27
4 7 379 43 3500
Throughput (kbits/sec)
5 1 89 37 3000
Avg: 2.3 Total: 33 Avg: 1395 Avg: 22
2500
2000
Table 3: Average TCP throughput and round-trip
ping latency to the 33 non-gateway nodes from 1500
each node’s chosen gateway, arranged by hop-count.
1000
Even at four hops, the average throughput is com-
parable to many DSL links. (multi-hop TCP) 500
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000
Most Roofnet users talk only to the Internet gateway with Distance (meters)
the best metric, and thus use routes with fewer hops than
the average of the all-pairs routes. Table 3 shows the TCP Figure 3: Link throughput versus distance for all
throughput to each node from its chosen gateway, again ar- links (top) and for the links used by Srcr (bottom).
ranged by hop-count. The maximum hop-count is only five Srcr makes the most use of short high-throughput
because no node is very far from the nearest gateway. The links. (single-hop TCP, multi-hop TCP)
average throughput for each hop-count is typically higher
because the Roofnet gateways happen to be more centrally
located than the average Roofnet node. Even at four hops, throughputs of two megabits/second or more, and a few
the average of 379 kbits/second is comparable to many DSL longer high-throughput links.
links. The lower graph shows just the links that Srcr uses in
The tables also show round-trip latencies for 84-byte ping some route. Srcr uses almost all of the links faster than
packets to estimate interactive delay on a relatively idle net- two megabits/second, but largely ignores the majority of
work. Latency is affected by per-hop processing time as well the links, which are slower than that. This means that
as by 802.11 retransmissions and back-offs when packets are Srcr effectively favors short links of a few hundred meters,
lost. Tables 1 and 3 suggest that interactive latency is ac- ignoring many links that would carry packets a kilometer
ceptable over a few hops but would be bothersome over nine or more in one hop. Fast short hops are the best policy:
hops. Roofnet users see on average 22 ms of latency to the for example, four 250-meter hops that individually run at
gateways, which is hardly noticeable in an interactive ses- three megabits/second yield a route with a throughput of
sion. 750 kbits/second, which is faster than most of the single
1000-meter links.
A link’s throughput is determined by its best transmit bit-
3.3 Link Quality and Distance rate and the delivery probability at that bit-rate. Figure 4
While high quality 802.11 links can be constructed using shows the CDF of delivery probabilities for the links used
directional antennas, it is not clear what useful ranges and by Srcr at the bit-rate chosen by SampleRate. The median
speeds to expect with omni-directional antennas, or what delivery probability is 0.8, and nearly a quarter of the links
kinds of links will be most useful to the routing protocol. have loss rates of 50% or more. Section 2.5 justifies the use
The upper graph in Figure 3 shows the throughput and of links and bit-rates with significant loss rates, as opposed
distance of each available link. Most of the available links to favoring low-loss links. 802.11 detects the losses with its
are between 500 and 1300 meters long, and can transfer ACK mechanism and re-sends the packets; this decreases
about 500 kbits/second at their best bit-rate. There are throughput but has little perceptible effect on latency, since
also a small number of links a few hundred meters long with the retransmissions occur within a few milliseconds.
Cumulative Fraction of Links 1
0.8 1
0.6
0.4
0.4
0.2
0.2
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 0
Delivery probability 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Number of Nodes
Figure 4: The distribution of delivery probabilities
of links used in Srcr routes, at the bit-rates chosen 700
400
3.4 Effect of Density 300
Mesh networks are only effective if the node density is
200
sufficiently high. This section examines the effects of density
by simulating different size subsets of Roofnet; subset size 100
and density are roughly proportional, since the network area
0
is about the same for all subsets.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
The simulations function as follows. For each subset size
Number of Nodes
n, a random set of n Roofnet nodes are selected. An estimate
of the multi-hop throughput between every pair in the subset 4
is computed, using only members of the subset as potential
Average Number of Hops
5
4 300
3 200
2
100
1
0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Number of Neighbors Number of Links Eliminated
1200
Figure 6: Histogram of the number of neighbors Random
per node. A node counts as a “neighbor” if it has Long x Fast
1000 Fastest
greater than 40% delivery probability for 1 megabit Most Effect
Disconnected Pairs
per second packets. (loss matrix)
800
10 600
9
8 400
7
200
6
Nodes
5 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
4
Number of Links Eliminated
3
2 Figure 8: Simulated average throughput and con-
1 nectivity among all pairs versus the number of links
0 eliminated. Each curve shows the result of elimi-
0 5 10 15 20 25 nating links in a particular order. (Simulated from
Number of Distinct First Hops single-hop TCP)