Performance assessment of cluster load balancing routing methods for triple play services in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are being called upon to improve their management policies to support a wide range of multimedia applications. As gateways towards wired networks are potential bottlenecks, cluster load balancing routing methods between multiple gateways play a central role in the routing management of the WMNs. This is especially important for demanding interactive applications, for instance triple play services which include traditional applications such as data applications, voice, and video over IP. However, the current performance assessment of these methods does not take into consideration triple play services in their traffic model and this paper seeks to fill this gap. This entails providing a detailed description of each method and carrying out a comparative evaluation by simulating a traffic model for triple play services. This performance assessment compares these cluster load balancing methods by assessing the traditional traffic performance parameters, while varying the traffic load which is the main variable factor that affects the load balancing methods. The results support that the cluster load balancing routing methods as well as the traffic load have a significant impact on each application performance when the applications are evaluated separately and moreover, they still have impact on the triple play services but it is lesser significant than when a single application is evaluated. Furthermore, the most agile and flexible method results in more scalable triple play service.