Bandwidth Aggregation Techniques in Heterogeneous Multi-homed Devices: A Survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews the evolution of bandwidth aggregation techniques in multi-homed devices, analyzing their features, trends, and open challenges across different protocol layers.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of bandwidth aggregation solutions, categorizing them by layer dependence and highlighting future research directions.

Findings

Identification of layer-dependent and layer-independent features

Analysis of evolution trends in bandwidth aggregation solutions

Discussion of open challenges and future research areas

Abstract

The widespread deployment of various networking technologies, coupled with the exponential increase in end- user data demand, have led to the proliferation of multi-homed, or multi-interface enabled, devices. These trends drove researchers to investigate a wide spectrum of solutions, at different layers of the protocol stack, that utilize available interfaces in such devices by aggregating their bandwidth. In this survey paper, we provide an overview and examine the evolution of bandwidth aggregation solutions over time. We begin by describing the bandwidth aggregation problem. We investigate the common features of proposed bandwidth aggregation systems and break them down into two major categories: layer-dependent and layer-independent features. Afterwards, we discuss the evolution trends in the literature and discuss some open challenges requiring further research. We end the survey with a brief presentation of related work in tangential research areas.