Predictive Caching for Roaming Wireless Clients
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
In wireless local area networks, when client devices roam between access points, there are delays in data delivery, especially for time-sensitive data like audio and video, due to the need for re-establishing connections and buffering, leading to disruptions in service.
Innovation Solution
Implement predictive caching and tunneling by detecting impending roams and pre-caching data traffic on candidate access points through multicast groups, ensuring seamless data delivery as the client device associates with new access points.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If predictive caching and tunneling is implemented to pre-load data on candidate access points, then service continuity and data delivery reliability are improved, but network infrastructure complexity and device overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by detecting impending roams and pre-caching data traffic on candidate access points before the actual roam occurs. This ensures data is ready for immediate delivery when the client associates with the new access point, eliminating service interruptions and maintaining continuous service.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary mechanism using multicast groups to distribute traffic copies to multiple candidate access points simultaneously. This mediator approach allows the network to efficiently replicate data to multiple locations without requiring complex individual unicast connections to each candidate access point.
2Speed
If data traffic is replicated to multiple candidate access points through multicast, then data delivery speed and readiness improve, but network bandwidth consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary data replication to candidate access points using multicast before the actual data transfer begins. By pre-loading data onto the candidate access points in advance, the system ensures immediate data availability at the destination access point when the roam occurs, significantly reducing the effective data delivery time.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges multiple unicast data delivery paths into a single multicast transmission. Instead of sending separate unicast copies of data to each candidate access point individually, the system uses a single multicast stream that is replicated by the network infrastructure, reducing redundant transmission overhead while still achieving parallel data delivery to multiple access points.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are provided for delivering data to a wireless client device in a wireless network via a plurality of access points as the wireless client device roams from one access point to another. A wireless client device receives data via a first wireless access point in the wireless network. An impending roam of a wireless client device is detected. A set of one or more candidate wireless access points other than the first wireless access point is determined to which the wireless client device may potentially roam. The one or more wireless access points in the set are assigned to a multicast group, and the traffic is sent to the multicast group. A message containing a synchronized context enables a new wireless access point to send data to the wireless client device from a point where the first wireless access point stopped sending data to the wireless client device.