ResFi: A Secure Framework for Self Organized Radio Resource Management in Residential WiFi Networks

TL;DR

ResFi is a secure, open-source framework enabling self-organized radio resource management in residential WiFi networks, improving performance through neighbor discovery and secure communication.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework that facilitates RRM in legacy residential WiFi deployments using existing interfaces and secure communication channels.

Findings

Prototype implementation demonstrates effective RRM functionalities.

Distributed channel assignment improves network performance.

Framework is applicable to real-world residential WiFi environments.

Abstract

In dense deployments of residential WiFi networks individual users suffer performance degradation due to both contention and interference. While Radio Resource Management (RRM) is known to mitigate this effects its application in residential WiFi networks being by nature unplanned and individually managed creates a big challenge. We propose ResFi - a framework supporting creation of RRM functionality in legacy deployments. The radio interfaces are used for efficient discovery of adjacent APs and as a side-channel to establish a secure communication among the individual Access Point Management Applications within a neighborhood over the wired Internet backbone. We have implemented a prototype of ResFi and studied its performance in our testbed. As a showcase we have implemented various RRM applications among others a distributed channel assignment algorithm using ResFi. ResFi is provided to the community as open source.