Seamless Handoff Management in IEEE 802.

11
Networks Using SDN
Steven Martinez∗ , Nelson Cardona† , Juan F. Botero‡
Universidad de Antioquia, Medellı́n, Colombia
Email: ∗ steven.martinez@udea.edu.co, † nelson.cardona@udea.edu.co, ‡ juanf.botero@udea.edu.co

Abstract—The implementation of IEEE 802.11 wireless net- Network device of packet Data plane
works has grown notably in recent years. Handoff management switching link
in wireless networks, i.e., transferring an active data session from Network device with
one cell defined by an access point to another, is a critical func- Control plane
embedded control link
tion. In IEEE 802.11 networks, this function interrupts mobile
users’ connection to the network, ultimately resulting in service SDN
disruption. Currently, the Software Defined Networking (SDN) Controller
paradigm presents innovations and abstractions in the network
architecture that can improve network management in wireless
networks. SDN, through Light Virtual Access Point abstraction,
enables the network to take control of the handoff process in
IEEE 802.11 without network disconnection (seamless handoff)
which is not possible in IEEE 802.11 traditional networks. In
this paper, we show through experimentation over real network
devices that SDN enables to perform the seamless handoff process Traditional Network SDN Network
in IEEE 802.11 without modification to the end user’s mobile
(Distributed Control) (Centralized Control)
station and completely controlled by the network. We show that
it is possible to reduce the handoff delay from one second or
more in traditional networks to milliseconds in SDN networks Fig. 1. Comparison between traditional and SDN networks
by means of the LVAP abstraction.
Index Terms—IEEE 802.11, handoff management, Software
Defined Networks, SDN.
In this paper, we show that SDN allows to perform the
handoff process in IEEE 802.11 without network disconnec-
I. I NTRODUCTION tion, i.e., seamless handoff. The above is accomplished without
any modifications to the MU and completely controlled by the
Many Wireless Local Area Networks (e.g. universities, insti-
network. Through experimentation over real network devices,
tutional networks or companies) are characterized by small and
we show that the handoff delay in SDN networks is in the
crowded geographic spaces, high density of mobile users and
milliseconds scale versus one second or more in IEEE 802.11
high congested access points [1]. In general, the IEEE 802.11
traditional networks. The rest of the paper is organized as
standard is the main used technology for these networks.
follows. Section II shows the background and theoretical
In this standard, when Mobile Users (MU) move from an
aspects of this paper. Section III describes the software and
Access Point (AP) to another, they lose the connection with
hardware considerations to implement the LVAP abstraction
the network and thus with the services. This is due to the fact
in real network devices. The performance evaluation of our
that IEEE 802.11 handoff is a hard handoff, i.e, MU has to
experiments is presented in Section IV. Finally, conclusions
finish its communication session with the current AP before
and future work are presented in Section V.
being migrated to another AP. This condition implies that MU
will suffer from service intermittences and bad user experience II. BACKGROUND
[2]. In this section we present the relevant concepts that will be
Currently, Software Define Networking (SDN) presents in- used for the development of the experiments involved in the
novations in the network architecture that can improve the per- realization of this work.
formance in wireless networks. SDN separates the data plane
from the control plane, simplifying the control network and A. Software Defined Networks - SDN
enhancing the network management towards to better control SDN is an emerging architecture for telecommunications
over network [3]. Specifically in IEEE 802.11 networks, SDN networks that breaks with the current vertical integration
enables the network to take control of the handoff process scheme separating the data plane (in charge of switch-
through the Light Virtual Access Point (LVAP) abstraction and ing/routing the packets) from the control plane (in charge of
makes possible seamless handoff which is not possible in IEEE defining how it is handled the traffic) in order to facilitate the
802.11 traditional networks [4]. network management. Fig. 1 illustrates how, in SDN, network

978-1-5386-6820-7/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

 WTP
LVAP1 LVAPn
MAC MU MAC MU
IP MU IP MU
BSSID BSSID
SSID SSID
Fig. 2. Stored information in a LVAP
devices are converted into switching devices (data plane) and
the control of the network (control plane) is performed through
a logically centralized device called controller. This in contrast
to traditional networks, where the data plane and the control
plane are embedded in the same device [3].
For the communication between the devices of the data
plane and control plane, a communication protocol called
OpenFlow is used [5].
B. Handoff management in IEEE 802.11: traditional networks
Handoff management is the transfer of a Mobile User (MU)
data session information from one AP to another through a
sequence of messages. It involves three phases: discovery,
(re)-association and (re)-authentication [6]. In IEEE 802.11
networks, handoff is a hard handoff. Hard handoffs imply
service disruption between the MU and the network.
The discovery phase begins when the Received Intensity
Signal Indicator - RSSI perceived by the MU degrades un-
til it loses connection. The MU scans all APs nearby and
sends probe requests frames in all operation channels. The
avaliable APs answer with probe responses frames. In the
association phase, the MU sends an association request frame
to the selected AP (the one that better RSSI reported) that
rensponds with an association response frame informing that
it is available. Once the association phase is finished, the
authentication phase begins. Here, the AP and MU exchange
the authentication request/responses frames in order to allow
access to the network.
Several methods have been proposed to perform handoff
in traditional IEEE 802.11 networks. The main approaches
to perform handoff in traditional networks are summarized
in [7]. Since the main goal of this paper is to compare the
handoff process in IEEE 802.11 traditional networks against
IEEE 802.11 SDN networks, next we present the main method
to perform handoff in SDN networks.
C. Handoff management in IEEE 802.11: SDN networks
The most important work in handoff management through
SDN is Odin [4], [8]. The authors propose the Light Virtual
Access Point - LVAP, an abstraction that allows to perform
the handoff process without service disruption, i.e., seamless
handoff.
WTP2
LVAP1
LVAP2
MU1
SDN
Controller
WTP1
MU2
(a)
The Controller migrates
LVAP1 from WTP1 to WTP2
WTP2
MU1
LVAP1
LVAP1
LVAP2
SDN
Controller
WTP1
MU2
(b)
Fig. 3. Migration process of a LVAP
LVAP allows to simplify association, authentication and
handoff process in IEEE 802.11 networks. Furthermore, it
helps to unify the wired and wireless networks. Different
MUs connected to the same AP are logically managed in
an isolated way. Handoff management is facilitated with the
LVAP because the network infrastructure is allowed to control
the handoff process without making any modification in the
MU and without triggering any link layer reassociation frame.
MUs connect to the SDN network as if they were connected
to a traditional network.
The LVAPs are created by the SDN controller and allocated
in the Wireless Termination Points - WTPs. The process
performed by the controller to assign a LVAP to an AP is
summarized as follows:
First, MUs connect to the network following the standard
(traditional) handoff process. A LVAP is created for each
MU. This enables the network to take control for association
decisions and MUs management regarding them as isolate
clients in the IEEE 802.11 MAC layer. Fig. 2 shows the stored
information in a LVAP. For each associated MU, MAC and IP
addresses are stored, as well as, a unique BSSID to create the
illusion that each MU has its own AP and one or more SSIDs.
Fig. 3 shows the process to migrate a LVAP from a physic
AP to another. In (a) MU1 and MU2 are connected to WTP1
through LVAP1 and LVAP2 respectively. In (b) MU1 moves
causing a degradation of the RSSI and forcing MU1 to
 UDP Server
DHCP SDN
Server Controller
Switch
WTP1 WTP2
MU
Fig. 4. Experimentation scenario
initiate a handoff process from WTP1 to WTP2. Here the
controller proceeds to migrate LVAP1 from WTP1 to WTP2.
The above is possible thanks to the fact that BSSID is unique
for each LVAP. This migration is performed without any link
or network layer messages or MU modification.
III. I MPLEMENTATION ON REAL NETWORK DEVICES USING
SDN
The main contribution of this work is the implementation
of a working framework for wireless networks using SDN
and the implementation of this on real network devices of
high performance and easy consecution in Colombia. This
will allow to have a testing environment for the design of
new handoff techniques based on SDN. The objective of the
real implementation is to compare the handoff process in a
traditional scenario against a SDN scenario.
We selected the EmPOWER framework [9], [10] due to the
following features:
• Is an open and free code framework.
• Uses python as programming language.
• Is not necessary that switch used to interconnect the APs
is an openflow switch.
• It allows the implementation of events oriented network
applications.
• It is a framework in constant updating and it is maintained
by its developers.
• The hardware needed is of easy acquirement in Colombia
at low cost.
EmPOWER can be considered as a Network Operating Sys-
tem - NOS. EmPOWER exposes interfaces to the applications
to communicate with data plane devices without performing
important hardware modifications. Currently EmPOWER has
support for SDN wired networks, cellular and IEEE 802.11
networks. Detailed information of the framework can be found
in [11]. For the implementation of the SDN network in real
network devices using Empower, one must keep in mind the
requirements of the controller [12] and the WTPs [13].
The requirements of WTPs are those necessary for the
implementation of the LVAP abstraction. In this case it is
necessary to comply with the requirements regarding the
generation of ACKs and agent implementation. While the tools
used by EmPOWER are open source, Ssme of the following
functionalities must be supported by the WTPs: 1) OpenWRT
[14] operating system support, 2) frame injection support via
radiotaps [15], 3) the possibility to create a BSSID mask in
order to create a unique BSSID for each LVAP [16] and 4)
flash memory greater than 8MB.
Considering these restrictions, we proceeded to search the
devices that fulfill these requirements and that are easily ac-
cessible in Colombia with very good hardware specifications.
After performing an exhaustive technological surveillance,
we selected the APs TP-LINK Archer C7 AC1750 Version
2.0 which fulfilled all the established requirements. The full
features of device can be found in [17].
IV. P ERFORMANCE EVALUATION
In this section we describe the experimentation scenario
and analyze the obtained results. The goal is to compare the
handoff behavior in a traditional IEEE 802.11 network against
a SDN IEEE 802.11 network and to show the SDN impact in
the handoff process.
The experiments are performed under the following condi-
tions:
• They were performed at the GITA research group labo-
ratory of the University of Antioquia.
• They were carried out within office hours, when there are
different types of traffic in the wireless environment.
• There was a noisy wireless environment. Around 8 to 10
IEEE 802.11 co-located networks were present during the
tests.
• No authentication credentials were used.
• UDP traffic was generated every 0.5 seconds with the
iperf tool [18].
• Both APs operated in the same channel.
• Each experiment was run during 100 seconds.
• The experiments were repeated 50 times.
The measured variables were the following:
• Throughput in terms of bandwidth (200 samples per
experiment).
• Handoff delay (for this variable, 4 samples are obtained
per experiment, this means 4 handoff process per exper-
iment).
A. Experimentation Scenario
Fig. 4 presents the experimentation scenario to assess the
SDN impact in the handoff process. Traditional and SDN
scenarios are the same, the only difference is the controller
introduced in SDN. The elements used in the experimentation
scenario are summarized in table I.
Since GITA’s lab is small (around 9.8*3.8 meters) it was not
possible to generate the handoff process, even if APs are set
up to the minimun transmision power. The handoff process
had to be emulated leaving the MU in a fixed equidistant
 Table I. Network devices features
Device Reference O.S CPU Memory Wired card Wireless card
Intel(R) Core(TM)
DHCP LENOVO Ubuntu 4 GB
i5-3550 Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 NA
Server MT 359 14.04.5 LTS DDR3
CPU @ 3.30GHz
HP 2920-24G Tri Core ARM1176 512 MB
Switch NA 24 RJ-45 10/100/1000 ports NA
(J9726A) @ 625 MHz SDRAM
TP-Link OpenWRT Qualcomm Atheros Atheros AR8327 Qualcomm Atheros
AP1, AP2 Archer C7 15.05 QCA9558 128 MB 4 10/100/1000Mbps QCA9558 + QCA9880
AC1750 2.0 Chaos Calmer CPU @ 720Mhz LAN Ports BR4A
Intel(R) Core(TM)
UDP ASUS Ubuntu 8 GB
i5-6200U RTL8111/8168/8411 Qualcomm Atheros
Server X556UQ 16.04.3 LTS DDR4
CPU @ 2.30GHz
Intel(R) Core(TM)
Mobile ASUS Ubuntu 6 GB Qualcomm Atheros Qualcomm Atheros
i5-2450M
User K53E 17.04 DDR3 AR8151 v2.0 AR9285
CPU @ 2.50GHz

25 25
Throughput (Mbps)

Throughput (Mbps)
20 20

15 15

10 10

5 5

0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100
Experiment time (s) Experiment time (s)
(a) IEEE 802.11 traditional network (b) IEEE 802.11 SDN network

Fig. 5. Throughput behavior for both scenarios

Table II. Mean throughput in IEEE 802.11 traditional scenario

Experiment 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Throughput
7.58 7.82 7.65 7.61 7.48 8.19 7.72 7.83 8.29 8.13
(Mbps)

Table III. Mean throughput in IEEE 802.11 SDN scenario

Experiment 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Throughput
9.50 7.46 8.04 8.59 6.14 7.08 8.12 8.43 7.19 8.25
(Mbps)

position from the APs and performing some procedures in
APs. In the case of traditional networks, the AP’s wireless
cards were alternately turned down via bash commands every
20 seconds forcing the MU to initiate the handoff process.
For SDN networks the LVAP for the MU was moved from
AP1 to AP2 and vice versa using python instructions from
the controller every 20 seconds. The aforementioned strategies
allow to generate an instantaneous disconnection. If the MU
would move, the throughput measure would not be affected
only by the handoff process, but by the distance too.
Throughout the experiment time, MU performs four hand-
offs at 20, 40, 60 and 80 seconds respectively where each
handoff method (traditional and SDN) performs its respective
operation.
B. Performance Results
1) IEEE 802.11 traditional networks: Fig. 5a shows the
throughput behavior of the handoff process for one particular
experiment in the traditional scenario. It can be observed that
the throughput fall at 20, 40, 60 and 80 seconds. In each of
these times a handoff process occurred in the MU between the
two APs. The throughput abruptly falls as a consequence of the
MU disconnection from the network, having a zero value. This
is the expected behavior since we generated an instantaneous
disconnection. Table II presents the mean throughput for 10
out of the 50 performed experiments. It can be observed
that there is no significant variation in the mean throughput
between different experiments.
Even though the throughput is an useful indicator of the
telecommunications networks behavior, the handoff delay, i.e.,
the time elapsed between the MU disconnection/connection
from the network, is a more interesting metric to analyze
the handoff process. The handoff delay allows to isolate
completely the handoff process and analyze the method ef-
fectiveness.
Fig. 6 presents the mean handoff delay for each of the
four handoff processes with a 95% confidence interval. The
measures are performed using the iw tool [19] and taking each
process separately, i.e., the first handoff (at 20 seconds) of the
50 experiments is averaged, the second handoff (40 seconds)
of the 50 experiments and so on. Our key observations are
summarized as follows: 1) All the mean handoffs delay were
greater to 1 second. Given that MU is disconnected from the
network during the handoff process, this implies at least 1
second of service disruption, 2) The handoff processes are not
symmetric. When the MU performs the handoff from AP1 to
AP2 and from AP2 to AP1, the handoff delay is not the same
and 3) The throughput could not be a good metric to analyze
the handoff process. The mean throughput is not significant
affected for packets loss over the handoff process. This can
be explained as the total time that MU was disconnected to the
network is around 6 seconds (12 packets) against 100 seconds
(200 packets) of the overall experiment.
2) IEEE 802.11 SDN networks: Fig. 5b shows the through-
put behavior of the handoff process for one particular exper-
iment in the SDN scenario. While the MU is performing the
handoff process at 20, 40, 60 and 80 seconds, the throughput
does not present abruptly falls with zero value, since the MU
is always connected to the SDN network. The throughput
variations can be explained by the wireless noisy environment.
Table III presents the mean throughput for 10 of the 50
performed experiments. As in traditional scenario, it can be
observed that there is no significant variation on the mean
throughput between different experiments.
In this SDN scenario, the iw tool did not register any event
that shows a MU disconnection from the SDN network. This is
consistent with the throughput behavior and it implies that the
MU does not disconnect from the network when it performs
handoff using SDN throughout a LVAP migration, in other
words, the MUs performs a seamless handoff. Considering
the aforementioned reasons, a valid strategy to estimate the
handoff delay is to measure the execution time that controller
takes in to migrate the LVAP. Fig 7 presents the mean handoff
delay for each of the four handoff processes with a 95%
confidence interval. These measures were realized under the
same considerations that in the traditional scenario. It can
observed that the handoff delay in SDN is in the miliseconds
scale against one second or more in traditional networks.
Our key observations can be summarized as follows: 1) SDN
allows to perform a seamless handoff, 2) SDN’s handoff is
completely transparent and without any modifications in the
MU, 3) SDN allows to perform a handoff network controlled
process. This could be used to design new handoff triggers,
e.g. traffic categories, load balancing among others and 4) the
handoff delay in SDN network is in the miliseconds scale
against one second or more in traditional networks.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
The intention of this work was to study the handoff
management process in IEEE 802.11 networks. This process
is ruled for three phases: discovery, re-association and re-
authentication and it is governed by the MU. We considered
2.0
Handoff delay (s)
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
1 2 3 4
Handoff number
Fig. 6. Handoff delay for IEEE 802.11 traditional scenario
1.2
1.0
Handoff delay (ms)
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
1 2 3 4
Handoff number
Fig. 7. Handoff delay for IEEE 802.11 SDN scenario
two methods: standard (traditional) handoff and SDN hand-
off via LVAP. We performed experiments over real network
devices considering a traditional IEEE 802.11 and a SDN
controlled WiFi network.
The performance of traditional handoff and SDN handoff
strategies were assessed throughout experimental data the
following terms of throughput (Mbps) and handoff delay with
following key results: 1) SDN allows to perform seamless
handoff process in IEEE 802.11 networks, 2) The LVAP
abstraction performs the handoff process without modifications
in the MU and 3) For the tested scenarios, the handoff delay
in traditional networks was in the scale of seconds against
miliseconds in SDN.
The methods have been analyzed considering experimental
scenarios where APs are operating in the same channel. Future
work will be dedicated to the study of new approaches that
enable LVAP migration to APs operating on different channels
or when the migration is performed to a busy resource. On
the other hand, since LVAP abstraction enables a network
controlled handoff, the possibility to create new triggers where
network information can be considered (traffic categories, load
balancing) is opened. In particular, some works have been
explored the LVAP migration to APs operating in different
channels [20].
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been partially funded by the COLCIENCIAS
project COL16-01-01 of the University of Antioquia (Colom-
bia).
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