What if Routers Were Social? Analyzing Wireless Mesh Networks from a Social Networks Perspective

TL;DR

This paper explores the analogy between wireless mesh networks and social networks, applying social network analysis metrics to improve network design and performance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach of using social network analysis metrics to evaluate and enhance wireless mesh networks, supported by real-world data.

Findings

SNA metrics help in designing more reliable WMNs

Application of social network concepts improves channel scheduling

Real WMN data validates the social network perspective

Abstract

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) consist of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology for serving wireless mesh clients to communicate with one another or to connect to the Internet. Nodes in a mesh network can communicate with each other either directly or through one or more intermediate nodes, similar to social networks. WMNs share many common properties with social networks. We first identify the differences and similarities between social networks and WMNs and then use metrics that are typically used for social network analysis (SNA) to assess real WMNs. Analyzing real WMN data collected from the UCSB MeshNet and MIT Roofnet testbeds reveals that using SNA metrics are helpful in designing WMNs with better performance. We demonstrate the validity of our conclusions and this new approach by focusing on two sample applications of social networks: network reliability assessment and channel access scheduling.