Bandwidth Aggregation Techniques in Heterogeneous Multi-homed Devices: A Survey

Abstract: The widespread deployment of various networking technologies, coupled with the exponential increase in end- user data demand, have led to the proliferation of multi-homed, or multi-interface enabled, devices. These trends drove researchers to investigate a wide spectrum of solutions, at different layers of the protocol stack, that utilize available interfaces in such devices by aggregating their bandwidth. In this survey paper, we provide an overview and examine the evolution of bandwidth aggregation solutions over time. We begin by describing the bandwidth aggregation problem. We investigate the common features of proposed bandwidth aggregation systems and break them down into two major categories: layer-dependent and layer-independent features. Afterwards, we discuss the evolution trends in the literature and discuss some open challenges requiring further research. We end the survey with a brief presentation of related work in tangential research areas.