Nesto - Network Selection and Traffic Offloading System For Android Mobile Devices

In this paper we present Nesto, a network selection and offloading system for android based mobile devices. Nesto chooses the best connectivity solution between available heterogeneous wireless networks using network switching. The suggested framework supports several configurable policies and addresses the following requirements: battery energy saving, bandwidth maximization, an offloading strategy for cellular operators and granting the best available network QoS to current running applications (e.g. minimizing delay and jitter for voip applications). Nesto is designed to support two primary connectivity modes: a traditional single connectivity mode and a full dual mode, where both the cellular and ad-hoc WiFi networks are used simultaneously. The full dual mode allows us to extend the always best connected definition from the device level to the application level, i.e.: selecting the best network for each application. This paper presents the architecture of Nesto and the different network selection optimization models. We evaluate our solution with simulated data and with real network traffic traces. Preliminary results indicate that: (1) energy efficient policies rely on the single connectivity operation mode, but they can be controlled to improve other networking QoS measures with minimum energy overhead, (2) using the full dual operation mode improves the overall networking performances of the device, (3) the full dual operation mode enables an efficient always best connected solution at the application level, optimizing the relevant measures for each application type.