We’ve been experimenting with real-time streaming over Wi-Fi where packets have a 100 ms latency budget.
The problem we wanted to look at was roaming. Even when you have good Wi-Fi coverage, moving between access points can cause short interruptions that are long enough to matter for a real-time application.
Instead of relying on a single Wi-Fi connection and hoping the handover is fast enough, we tested our overlay multi-connectivity transport using three Wi-Fi access points at the same time.
The transport can use all three paths simultaneously, so a roaming event or temporary interruption on one connection doesn’t necessarily interrupt the stream.
We’re still digging into the results, but it’s an interesting way of thinking about Wi-Fi reliability: rather than trying to make one connection perfect, use several imperfect ones together.
This is a great result and a very nice visualization. One thing I’d suggest is making it clearer upfront that this requires a computer with multiple WiFi adapters; it’s not mentioned until more than halfway through the article.
That’s a great point. I’ll see if we can make that clearer upfront.
In this particular test, the laptop had three Wi-Fi adapters, one connected to each AP. You should still see benefits with just two independent Wi-Fi connections, but for the results shown here we used three.
mortenvp · · focus · HN ↗
The problem we wanted to look at was roaming. Even when you have good Wi-Fi coverage, moving between access points can cause short interruptions that are long enough to matter for a real-time application.
Instead of relying on a single Wi-Fi connection and hoping the handover is fast enough, we tested our overlay multi-connectivity transport using three Wi-Fi access points at the same time.
The transport can use all three paths simultaneously, so a roaming event or temporary interruption on one connection doesn’t necessarily interrupt the stream.
We’re still digging into the results, but it’s an interesting way of thinking about Wi-Fi reliability: rather than trying to make one connection perfect, use several imperfect ones together.
pimlottc · · focus · HN ↗
mortenvp · · focus · HN ↗
In this particular test, the laptop had three Wi-Fi adapters, one connected to each AP. You should still see benefits with just two independent Wi-Fi connections, but for the results shown here we used three.