MIC: Enabling Efficient Concurrent Use of Multiple Network Interfaces on Mobile Systems

Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are provisioned with multiple network interfaces capable of data connectivity such as the cellular radio, WiFi, bluetooth, and others. However, restrictions from the carrier side allow us to use only one of the interfaces at any given time, and not allow us to fully utilize all the data links in a mobile device's arsenal. We propose MIC, an architecture to enable concurrent, efficient, multi-interface connectivity. MIC begins with the observation that a large fraction of mobile traffic is HTTP [3], [4]. By modifying the HTTP support libraries in the Android Framework, MIC provides the ability to utilize multiple interfaces for the same connection while maintaining the application as well as OS semantics. This allows for users to re-flash the system software on their phones to enable multi-interface connectivity and use it in a seamless manner without changing the apps or need any modifications to the server.