On the Impact of Guest Traffic in Open-Access Domestic Broadband Sharing Schemes

TL;DR

This study experimentally examines how uplink guest traffic affects broadband quality in open-access sharing schemes, demonstrating that a small amount of guest traffic can be tolerated without degrading user experience, depending on scheduling policies.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of guest traffic impact on broadband sharing, proposing hybrid scheduling policies optimized for maintaining quality of experience.

Findings

Few dozen kilobytes per second of guest uplink traffic are tolerable.

Hybrid packet scheduling policies are suitable for broadband sharing.

Optimal policy depends on connection capacity and packet-dropping behavior.

Abstract

Open-access domestic broadband connection sharing constitutes a voluntary practice that is associated with societal, economic and public-safety benefits. Despite this fact, broadband subscribers are usually hesitant to freely share their broadband connection with guests for a multitude of reasons; one of them being sharing their network might hinder their own broadband quality of experience. In this paper, we investigate experimentally the impact of uplink guest traffic on the sharer's broadband quality of experience under both generic and broadband-sharing-specific packet scheduling policies. Both guest-user traffic and access point profiles employed in our study are developed by analyzing real-world traffic traces and measurements, captured from actual broadband sharing networking environments. Our results validate the suitability of hybrid packet scheduling policies for broadband sharing schemes and show that only a few dozen kilobytes per second of uplink guest traffic can be tolerated by sharers without hampering their broadband quality of experience. In this context, we show that the selection of the most appropriate packet scheduling policy for broadband sharing, as well as its respective configuration, depend largely on the capacity of the broadband connection and the policy's packet-dropping behavior on guest traffic.