An OpenWRT Solution for Future Wireless Homes

Most of future digital services for home and office users will be deployed and delivered through the Internet and wireless connectivity. However, employing regular access points (APs) and protocols will not allow an efficient coexistence among heterogeneous multimedia application flows. Indeed, real-time and elastic applications are (and will be) supported by different protocols and featured with different performance requirements: low per-packet delay for the former and high throughput for the latter. In this work, we present a work-in-progress evaluation of a new AP prototype able to guarantee a fast and smooth data delivery for real-time streams while maintaining a high throughput for TCP-based applications. Our approach is based on a user-space modification of the AP’s code based on OpenWRT so as to appropriately shape transiting network traffic. Preliminary experimental results confirm that our solution represents an optimal candidate to become the center of future wireless in-home scenarios.