iPath: Achieving high-performance end-to-end paths for multi-homed mobile hosts

This work aims at building iPath - a path-selection system for multi-homed mobile hosts that assists vertical handoff. Unlike existing systems, iPath selects the access network interface for communications based on end-to-end path properties (e.g., available bandwidth, delay, packet loss rate, and jitter). iPath also adopts a new metric for handoff - “switching cost”, which is caused by the congestion control behavior of transport protocols when the mobile host changes its source or destination address. Handoff decision based on the switching cost prevents inappropriate handoff in terms of transmission performance and smoothness.